Aadhaar-Voter ID card link: Government may notify rules soon, check details

The rules for linking electoral rolls with Aadhaar may come soon, former Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra has said.

According to Chandra, who demitted office on May 14 after serving in the commission for over three years, sharing Aadhaar details will be voluntary for voters, but those not doing so will have to give "sufficient reasons".

An electoral roll is a list of voters who are considered eligible to vote in an election.

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Linking of Aadhaar with electoral

In an interview with news agency PTI, he said two major electoral reforms which took place in his tenure as the CEC are the provision of four dates in a year instead of one to enrol those turning 18 as voters and the linking of Aadhaar with electoral rolls to check duplicate entries in the voters' list.

Earlier, only January 1 of every year was the cut-off date. The four cut-off dates for enrolment is part of a Bill passed by Parliament a few months back to allow linkage of Aadhaar with the electoral rolls.

"The second biggest reform is the linking of Aadhaar with electoral rolls to check duplicate entries. It will make the voter list pure. It will make the electoral roll more robust," he said.

When will the rules come?

The rules linking Aadhaar with electoral rolls will be notified by the government soon as Election Commission has already sent draft proposals in this regard.

The poll body has also sent the forms which are to be changed and they are with the Law Ministry.  

Sharing Aadhaar details will be voluntary

Sharing Aadhaar details will be voluntary but sufficient reason will have to be given by voters for not giving their Aadhaar numbers. The reason may include not having an Aadhaar or not having applied for one.   

Benefits of linking Aadhaar with electoral rolls                 

According to Chandra, sharing Aadhaar numbers will help the EC to purify the voter list.

It will also ensure that the poll panel is able to give more services to the voters through its communication system.

It can give more services such as when the elections will be held and booth details on their phone numbers.