ECI to begin linking of Aadhaar data with EPIC

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday said that it will set the ball rolling on the process of linking the Aadhaar data of electors with the Elector Photo Identification Card (EPIC) database, in an apparent bid to weed out the problem of duplicate EPICs.

But the commission said that the operation will be done “in line with” the Supreme Court’s judgement of 2023, when the poll body had told the top court that linking Aadhaar with EPICs was not mandatory.

“...It was decided that the linking of EPIC with Aadhaar will be done only as per the provisions of Article 326 (eligible people entitled to be registered as an elector) of the Constitution, (under) Representation of People’s Act and in line with Supreme Court judgement of 2023…Accordingly, technical consultations between UIDAI and the technical experts of ECI are to begin soon,” said ECI in its release.

The commission emphasised the “Aadhaar card only establishes the identity of a person”, and that voting rights are given to the citizens of India.

The decision was taken at a meeting in New Delhi comprising Chief Election Commissioner Kumar Gyanesh, election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi along with the secretaries of the ministry of electronics and information technology, Union home ministry, legislative department of law and justice ministry, and with the Chief Executive Officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India, the nodal body for Aadhaar. The high-level meeting came days after ECI had sent a note containing Gyanesh Kumar’s speech to all Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) where he said that “all attempts should be made to link Aadhaar (with the electoral roll)”.

In September 2023, the Supreme Court had disposed of a writ petition seeking amendments to forms 6 and 6B after ECI submitted to the court that since submitting Aadhaar number was not mandatory under the Registration of Electors (Amendment) Rules, 2022, the poll body was “looking into issuing appropriate clarificatory changes in the forms introduced for the purpose”.

In February 2024, the apex court declined to initiate contempt proceedings against ECI for not amending the forms, noting the submission that it was addressing the issue.

In Tuesday’s meeting, it was decided that the ECI will propose changes to the language of the two forms which will be vetted by the law ministry. The two forms, in effect, make it mandatory for Aadhaar holders to submit their Aadhaar number. 

The move comes amid a controversy over duplicate EPICs in some states such as West Bengal, with opposition parties alleging that it compromised the electoral process. ECI has said that it will remove all the duplicates, and the exercise is under process. An EC official, who requested anonymity, said that the duplicates in this scenario mean “multiple electors with the same EPIC number”.

An ECI official, requesting anonymity, said that the preliminary discussions in the Tuesday meeting were around whether or not to link the Aadhaar data with the EPIC database. “The shortfalls of not linking the already available data were discussed and then we agreed that linking would solve a lot of problems. The UIDAI made a presentation on how they can handle the entire situation swiftly. In the first phase, there will be a pilot which will be undertaken to authenticate the Aadhaar data. After the authentication process, the EPIC and the Aadhaar will be matched and errors will be rectified,” the official added.

In September 2023, the poll panel had told the Supreme Court that 662.3 million Aadhaar numbers had been uploaded “in the process of finalising electoral rolls”. In December 2023, law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal told Parliament that “linking of Aadhaar with EPIC has not yet started”.

Two people aware of the matter said that the linkage has not happened yet, and that Aadhaar numbers are stored in a Aadhaar Data Vault (ADV) by ECI. According to the UIDAI website, all agencies that store Aadhaar numbers are required to create an ADV which stores Aadhaar numbers in an encrypted manner to reduce the risk of unauthorised access.

The first person cited above said that the ECI stores EPIC data in one database with two folders. The first folder contains the electors demographic data (name, date of birth, gender, parents’ names) and the second has EPIC numbers. “The idea is to link Aadhaar numbers with the second folder with the EPIC number,” this person said.