Government opposes, people favour linking Aadhaar to voter ID

NEW DELHI:  The government may be against linking of voter ID card with Aadhaar, but it seems people are in favour of it.

In a survey conducted by online community platform Local- Circles, 80 per cent people supported linking of voter ID with Aadhaar as they felt this would help in eliminating bogus voters.

Only a meagre 8 per cent respondents said they did not support the move while 12 per cent chose not to express their opinions. As many as 15,134 votes were polled on this question.

As the country goes into election mode in 2018-19, LocalCircles conducted a series of polls to understand the citizens’ perspective. Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had recently said he was not in favour of Aadhaar number being linked to electoral photo-identity cards as the two were meant to serve different purposes. However, many citizens who participated in the survey said linking the two could minimise bogus voting as biometric imprints cannot be faked or duplicated.

It would also increase the percentage of people who cast their votes as they will be able to vote from their computer or smartphone sitting anywhere in the world. The citizens were also asked if they had observed fraudulent voting happening in their area during elections. While 28 per cent said ‘yes’, 35 per cent were not very sure about it and 37 per cent said they were sure fraudulent voting was not happening. The question received 6,800 responses.

The Election Commission had in February 2015 said that about 85 million names on electoral rolls in the country were either fake or duplicate. To make the voting process error-free, all voter ID cards would be linked with Aadhaar numbers, it said. But the Supreme Court stayed the move.