Electoral Integrity

In the recent Delhi Assembly Elections 2025, Many Allegations are being raised on the electoral list and removal of voters. Also in the Maharashtra Elections as well, ECI has faced many allegations saying it’s no longer an independent entity. Parties have raised a question within the span of 6 months from Parliament Elections how can 60 lakh voters get added. In this context let us analyse the Possibility of linking aadhar with voter id and its potential for a fair electoral list

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Voter Id is granted to every citizen who is greater than 18 years old which gives them the right to vote. Whereas Aadhar is issued to any one who is a resident of India. It can be issued once a child is born in the name of Blue Aadhar and late after the age of 5, It is updated to regular Aadhar.

Issues in the Electoral List and Voting:

1. Duplicate voters: Many of the voters have voter id at more than one place. For example, People in Hyderabad with Andhra Origin vote in both Telangana Elections and Andhra Elections. Thus we can see the drop in voting rate in Parliament Elections as compared to Assembly Elections in Telangana.

2. Biased Electoral List: Politicians in power are deleting the voters whom they may expect they may be voting against them by influencing the State Electoral Officers

3. Rigging: There are many places in the Country where EVM’s are rigged. It is monotonous voting without people, officer observation and monitoring. Sometimes the polled votes are more than voters at that polling booth.

4. Absentee Votes: The officials in the polling booth who are influenced by politicians, while monitoring or before the polling date know through various ways people who are having high chances of not voting and thus vote for a specific candidate as the absentee Votes. Eg: NRI’s who are having high chances not voting.

5. Improper Voting List: Many voters who are eligible are not provided the voting right on attaining age due to various systemic issues.

6. Voting Multiple times by the same person.

Linking Aadhar Card and Voter ID:

1.  It is clearly mentioned on the Aadhar Card that it is not a proof of citizenship. In this case where voting is done based on citizenship it clearly fails and chances are high voting is granted to non citizens also

2. In the recent past, we have seen many news of issuing false Aadhar Cards. In some cases It is even issued to Lord Hanuman as well.

3. Aadhar Address Updation option is an open to everyone via online and easy process with minimal cost. In this case it is easy to submit aadhar as address proof and gain Multiple voting at different places

4. As Aadhar has Biometrics linked this can help Multiple Voting on enabling Aadhar enabled Authenticated Voting.

5. There is also possibility of voting for less than 18 years age as Aadhar is issued to everyone.

Moreover this problem of the Electoral List is the systemic problem and ethical and moral issue of the Officers who sit in ECI and who participate making electoral list making. As voter id itself is a unique id, it doesn’t make any sense linking to other Unique Id — Aadhar though it may sound good and progressive. There is high need of issuing of common electoral list for all elections with a cut off date. And also based on the Date of birth records available with the govt. That individual should be enabled to vote and this huge exercise of constant deletion, adding, modifying of electoral list should be thrown away. In the digital age this shouldn’t be a big problem statement, unless it is looked with eyes of politicians with motivated interests.