Resist linking Voter ID and Aadhaar!
Resist this grave threat to our democracy
The Election Commission of India has moved a proposal to the Law Ministry to link voter ID cards (and the "EPIC" database) with Aadhaar. This is a dangerous idea which can fundamentally alter the structure of our democracy.
Rethink Aadhaar joins almost 500 prominent individuals, including former civil servants, journalists, social activists, researchers and students to strongly oppose this proposal, and call on the Election Commission of India to withdraw its plans. The signatories to the statement include electoral reform group, Association for Democratic Reforms; civil rights groups from across the country such as the Peoples’ Union of Civil Liberties, MKSS, Adivasi Women’s Network, Chetna Andolan, and NAPM Jharkhand; and digital rights groups including Rethink Aadhaar, Article 21 Trust, the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Bachao Project, and the Free Software Movement of India.
Linking Voter ID and Aadhaar is an ill-thought, illogical, and unnecessary move which could undermine our electoral democracy, and impact voters’ trust in the electoral system. Indians’ right to vote cannot be imperilled by irresponsibly linking databases and using an opaque algorithm to “verify” identities. Technological solutions cannot replace responsible administration. Timely door-to-door verification of voters remains the most effective method of updating electoral rolls and ensuring accuracy of voter data.
The Election Commission has claimed that this will help clean up voter rolls, and that any linkage will be “voluntary”. As we noted in our earlier representation, and as the Constitutional Conduct Group has recently noted, we are deeply concerned that this will almost certainly lead to mass disenfranchisement, could increase voter fraud, given the mass discrepancies in the Aadhaar database, and could violate people’s right to privacy by enabling voter profiling through the linkage of data sets. This proposal would violate the judgment of the Supreme Court of India inJustice K.S. Puttaswamy (retd.) & Anr. v. Union Of India (Aadhaar judgment) which limited the use of Aadhaar authentication solely to welfare programmes and to link with PAN numbers for the purposes of income tax. Any proposal to link the UID with Voter IDs must be rejected.
We are concerned about the following harms from such a proposal
First, Aadhaar is not proof of the right to vote. Aadhaar is not, and was never meant to serve as proof of citizenship, which is why Aadhaar numbers were issued to all residents and not citizens. Under the Representation of Peoples’ Act, only citizens who are resident in India have the right to vote. Linking the two is senseless, and would be without any basis - in addition to being a colossal waste of public funds. Deletion of voters based on whether their records in the EPIC database corresponds to Aadhaar records has no legal basis.
Second, such a proposal will almost certainly cause mass disenfranchisement. This is not the first time that the government has tried to link Voter ID and Aadhaar to “purify” the electoral rolls. In 2015, the Central government introduced the National Election Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), and during the Aadhaar challenge, the Supreme Court passed an interim order on August 11th 2015, asking the ECI to suspend Aadhaar voter linkage. As this was never permitted by the Supreme Court in its final judgement and order, proceeding with this would be in violation of the Supreme Court’s judgement. Despite this, there was rampant misuse of Aadhaar data. In 2018, the chief electoral officer of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh linked Aadhaar data with voter identity cards. In 2018, during the Telangana Assembly Election, people found out that at least 55 lakh voters had been arbitrarily disenfranchised. It was only after public outrage around these arbitrarily deletions, that the government rolled this back.
Previous attempts to use Aadhaar to “clean-up” databases of other government registries, like MGNREGA and PDS, have resulted in mass disenfranchisement, and thousands of citizens have been arbitrarily deleted from systems without any notice. For example, a study from Jharkhand found that 90% of ration cards cancelled as “bogus” during Aadhaar linking were real. In 2018, even the CEO of UIDAI admitted that authentication failure for government services was as high as 12% - this translates into millions of affected persons. A recent J-PAL study in Jharkhand also found that Aadhaar based verification “either did not reduce errors of inclusion or leakage or did so at the cost of increased exclusion error”, with a high error rate of between 22% and 34% of reduced disbursals. Once lost, Aadhaar has been found to be almost impossible to retrieve; whereas for voter IDs there are simpler and more well defined ways to replace a misplaced voter ID card.
Third, such a proposal is more likely to increase voter fraud. Linking Aadhaar would dilute the sanctity of the Voter ID database. As we pointed out in 2019, self-reported errors in Aadhaar data are reportedly one-and-one-half times higher than errors in the electoral database. The assumption behind the proposal to link the two databases is that the authenticity of people’s records in the Aadhaar database will be used to determine the authenticity of a record in the Voter ID/ EPIC database. However, given widespread data quality issues in the Aadhaar database, this exercise would diminish the sanctity of records in the Voter ID database. Data quality issues in the Aadhaar database – a result of inadequate enrolment practices and lack of effective correction mechanisms – have been extensively documented - including fake entries and incorrect details. The UIDAI has itself admitted this, before various courts, and multiple Courts have refused to accept Aadhaar as proof of birth, or of identification. More recent research has also shown that Aadhaar-PAN linking has introduced fraudulent entries into the system.
Fourth, Biometric authentication for voting must not become a requirement. There are numerous reports of starvation deaths across states due to a lack of Aadhaar linkage, biometric failures, absence of adequate infrastructure and lack of adequate grievance redressal mechanisms in UIDAI’s implementation which has been painstakingly exposed by the Right to Food campaign. Fingerprints don't work for the vast majority of Indians, especially those who work with their hands and older persons, and facial authentication is inaccurate and error-prone. The UIDAI has sought to circumvent the inaccuracy and issues in biometric authentication through an ill-conceived "nominee system", and OTPs in the case of welfare programs. How will this work in the case of voting? Will we have to send family members to vote instead, if our fingerprints don’t work? It’s also pertinent to mention that election booths are sometimes set up in remote locations, where voting has to be processed manually. Even EVMs are not connected to an internet connection, to prevent any kind of tampering. In such locations, how will biometric verification work in absence of the internet?
Fifth, linking these two databases would be an attack on the right to privacy, and scope for misuse. We have serious concerns that such a proposal would violate our constitutional and fundamental right to privacy, and the secrecy of the vote. India currently has no data protection law, and the current personal data protection bill has wide exceptions for the government. Any attempts to link Aadhaar to the voter IDs, would lead to demographic information which has been linked to Aadhaar, being linked to the voter database. This creates the possibilities for disenfranchisement based on identity, of increased surveillance, and targeted advertisements and commercial exploitation of private sensitive data. In 2019, the Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated the disastrous impact that deep and invasive voter profiling had on individuals and on democracies. We have seen this in India: most recently, the Madras HC has asked the Election Commission to look into allegations against the Bharatiya Janata Party that it was illegally using Aadhaar data of voters in Puducherry for making political gains in the Assembly elections. In 2019, an investigation revealed that data could have been taken from the UID database in order to delete voter names in Andhra Pradesh - names were taken from the voter lists. This could be particularly harmful against minorities - a 2018 report found that 20% of Muslim adults were missing from electoral lists in Karnataka. We have learnt from other countries how a single form of identification for voting, leads to greater disenfranchisement. In some cases, onerous identity requirements are used to block disenfranchised persons from voting.
Finally, we cannot trust the ECI’s promise of “voluntariness”. The ECI’s claim that this would be based on "voluntariness". This is a grossly inadequate safeguard. We have seen how throughout the Aadhaar project “voluntary” on paper translates to a coercive mechanism in practice; and how this changes with time and in practice.
Call to action
Linking Voter ID and Aadhaar is an ill-thought, illogical, and unnecessary move which could undermine our electoral democracy, and impact voters’ trust in the electoral system. Indians’ right to vote cannot be imperilled by irresponsibly linking databases and using an opaque algorithm to “verify” identities. Technological solutions cannot replace responsible administration. Timely door-to-door verification of voters remains the most effective method of updating electoral rolls and ensuring accuracy of voter data.
You can read the statement with the signatories here.
I. Organisations
Adivasi Women's Network
Association for Democratic Reforms
Article 21 Trust
The Bachchao Project
BlockSurvey, Inc.
Center for Women and Children Solidarity Network
Forum Against Oppression of Women
Forum for Electoral Integrity
Free Software Movement of India
Honavar Foundation
Internet Freedom Foundation
J&K RTI Movement
Maadhyam
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
NAPM, Jharkhand
National Platform for the Rights of the Disalbed 17. Oddjoint Art
OpenSpace
People's Union for Civil Liberties
People's Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka
People's Union for Civil Liberties, Maharashtra
People's Union for Civil Liberties, Rajasthan
Rethink Aadhaar
Socialist Party (India) Telangana
Individuals
Aarti
Aavishkar Rangari
Abani K Bhuyan, PSU
Abbasbhai
Abdul
Abha Rao
Abhayraj Naik, Azim Premji University
Abhi
Abhijit Nagendranath
Abhijith S
Abhilash Paul
Abhimanyu Chandra
Abhishek Gupta
Abhishek Sagar
Abhradip Acharya
Adaikala Regan
Aditi Chowdhury
Aditi Mehta, Constitutional Conduct Group
Aditi P. Kaur
Aditya Banerjee, Conservation Initiatives
Aditya Panwar
Aditya Vikram
Adv. Manoj, Manoj Harit & Co
Adv. Milind Babar
Advait Dharap
Afreen Khan
Afried Raman
Agnibesh Mukherjee
Ahesanali
Ajesh Narayanan
Alagammai
Alstrin Cyrus, Kofluence
Alwyn D'Souza
Ameya
Ameya Kelkar
Amina Yasmeen
Amit kumar
Amit Prakash Ambasta
Amitadyuti Kumar, APDR
Amitava Choudhury, Information and Action for Peoples' Right
Amogh Barakol
Amrita Johri, SNS
Amrita Shodhan
Anand Arni
Ananya Jain
Aneesh Correa
Angela
Anil Sadgopal, All India Forum for Right to Education
Anilkumar
Anirudh
Anita Das, Infosys
Anjali Bhardwaj, SNS
Ankita Aggarwal
Annapurna Menon, University of Westminster
Annie T
Anubhav
Anupama Datta, HelpAge India
Anushka
Anwesha Bhattacharya, Harvard Kennedy School
Apurva Bamezai
Archana Dwivedi
Archismita Choudhury, Internet Freedom Foundation
Ardhendu Sen
Arnav Mathur
Aroon Mohan
Aroon Raman
Arun Agnihotri
Arun I
Aruna Burte
Aruna Rodrigues
Arundhati Dhuru, NAPM
Arup Kumar Sen
Arvind
Ashish Asgekar
Ashish M
Ashok Choudhary, AIUFWP
Ashok Nehru
Ashok Sharma, Constitutional Conduct Group
Ashwin Santhosh
Ashwini
Ayush
Ayushi
Baba Fakruddin
Balaji
Bandish Soparkar
Barath N
Beena Choksi
Bernard D'Mello
Bharat Varma
Bharati Jagannathan
Bhaskar
Bidisha M
Bishakha
Bishakha Bhanja
Boma
Brindaalakshmi K
Brinelle D'souza
Britts
C B
C. Balakrishnan, Retired from the Govt of India
Chaitali Dixit
Chandrasekar R
Chantal
Chayanika Shah, Forum Against Oppression of Women
Chetan
Chhavi Sachdev
Daniel Umi
Danish Mukadam
David Bodapati, The Cedars
Deb Mukharji
Deepak Kaushik
Deepak Sanan, Constitutional Conduct Group
Deepthi
Denice Mathew Thomas
Deonis Baghwar
Derick
Divij Joshi
Divya
Divyangi
Diwan Singh
Dr V Rukmini Rao
Dr. Yogitha S, GFGC, Saragur
Dr. Mira Shiva
Dr. Shakeel
Dr. Suvajeet Duttagupta
Dr. Tony PM, Social Research and Training Centre Ranchi
Dr.Deepak Viswanath
Dr.Sudhir Vombatkere
Dunu Roy, Hazards Centre
Eesha
Elsa Muttathu
Fareeha Jabeen
Firoz Ahmad
Francis Colaso
Francis Parmar
Gabriele Dietrich, NAPM
Garima
Gaurav
Gautam Chaudhury
Gautam Mukhopadhaya
Gautam Sonti
Gayatri Singh, Sr Advocate, Bombay High Court
Geo Peter Tharappel
Gopal Krishna Pillai, Rerd. Government Officer
Gopalan Balagopal
Goutham
Gudu Sharma
Hamid Ansari
Hannan Mollah, All India Kisan Sabha
Hardik
Harikumar TP
Haritha P.E
Hemal
Himan
Himmat Singh Ratnoo
Hiren Gandhi, Darshan
I Pillai
Ibrahim
Imrana Qadeer
Indranee Dutta
Irfan Engineer
Ishwari
Jagdeep Chhokar
Jahnavi Visvanathan
Jairus Banaji
James Herenj, Convenor, Jharkhand NREGA Watch
Jaskaran Singh
Jayan
Jayati Ghosh, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Jibraan Mansoor
Jitesh Gautam
Jittu Varghese
John Varghese
Jomy Joseph
Joseph
Jyoti Punwani
K Paul
K S Gopal
K. Sudhir, Peoples' Architectural Commonwealth
Kabir
Kalyani Menon Sen, Independent researcher
Kamayani Bali Mahabal
Kannalmozhi Kabilan, The New Indian Express
Karan
Karan Garg
Kartar K Sainani
Karthik Govil
Karthik Narayana V, Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management
Kaushik Tadvi
Kaushiki Rao
Kaustubh Mangam
Kavita Srivastava, People's Union for Civil Liberties
Keerti bhandary
Kiara
Kingshuk Dasgupta
Kingshuk Roy
Kinshuk Goyal
Koninika Ray, National Federation of Indian Women
Krishnadarsan
Kumkum Roy
Laavanya, LibTech India
Lakshmi Venkatesan
Lapanoha
Lavneet
Leon Morenas
Lizmary BC
M B Nataraj
Madhava Prasad
Madhu Bhaduri
Madhura Chakraborty, Activist
Madhura Padhye
Mahinder Pal singh
Mahua Kamat
Malaika Mathew Chawla
Malay Tewari, CPI (ML) Liberation
Malvika, Matterhorn Projects LLP
Manan
Manpreet
Mansi Mehta
Manu
Maqbool Saleem
Maria Aurora Couto, Writer
Mayuresh Vaidya
Meena Gupta
Meera Dewan
Meera. R
Megha
Megha Singh
Melroy C F Fernandes
Mit
Mohini Mullick
Mona Ambegaonkar
Mrinalini Nayak
Mubeen
Mukesh
Mukesh Malik
Mukta Srivastava
Murugu
Nafisa Barot, Utthan
Nakul Kishore Dumblekar
Nandini Nayak, Ambedkar University Delhi
Narayan Rao
Nasruddin Shaikh
Natashia Gonsalves, SUCDEN
Navamita Chandra
Navdha Malhotra
Naveen Purushothaman
Nayonika Bose
Nazar Mohammad Shavadi
NB Murthy
Neela D’सूजा
Neelakantan
Neha
Neha Chopra
Neha Das
Neil Fernandes
Nidhi
Nihar
Nikhil
Nilanjan Dutta
Nimmi
Niranjani Iyer
Nirvan, WIPRO
Nisha Biswas
Nishant Kumar
Nishi Sharma
Nitin
Nivedh
Omkar
P Chaudhuri
P K Mahesh
P. R. Dasgupta, IAS Pensioner
Padma Srinivasan
Padma Velaskar
Pallavi Sobti Rajpal
Parampath Joy Oommen
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Independent journalist, author, publisher, documentary film-maker and teacher
Paras Katiyar
Parmu Singh
Parul Soni
Pascal Alan Nazareth
Pat
Pervin Jehangir
Phani
Philip Pinto
Piyush
Pooja Monani
Poorna
Praavita
Prabhat Patnaik, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Pracheta
Prajit Basu
Pranami Rajb
Prasad Chacko
Praveen, Times
Preeti Sampat
Prema
Primus Kerketta
Pritha Taraphder
Priti
Pritom Ghosh
Priyam
Priyanka Singh
Priyesh Pavithran
Procheta Mallik
Prof. K Satchidanandan, Indian Writers Forum
Prof.Mohan Rao
Purwa Bharadwaj
Pushkar Raj
Pushpendra, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
R K Grandhi
R Ravishankar
Rabin Chakraborty
Radha Holla
Raghavendra Rao
Raghunandan Hegde
Ragvendra Gadage
Rahul Nair, Delhi University
Rahul Saunik, Quikr India Private Limited
Rajdeep Singh Puri
Rajendran Narayanan, Azim Premji University, Bangalore
Rajesh Krishnan
Rajesh Mehar
Raju Sharma, Retired Civil Servant
Rakesh Shekhawat
Rakhi Sehgal
Ram
Ramani Atkuri, Public Health Professional
Ramani Venkatesan, Retired Civil Servant
Ramesh Tikamdas Bajaj
Ramyak Rohan Mohanty
Ranabir Chakravarti
Ranjeet Verma
Raufa Shaikh, Students for Liberty
Ravi Theja
Revathi
Ricky Saldanha
Rishav Kundu, IIIT Hyderabad
Rita Puthenkalam
Riyaz
RK Singh, Save Democracy
Rohan Mathew
Rohini Hensman
Rohini Lakshané
Rohith
Roja Mathew
Romar Correa, University of Mumbai
Roop Kaur Brar
Rosamma Thomas
Roshan
Raju
Rudi Warjri, Constitutional Conduct Group
Rupa
Rupsa Mallik
S Bharatwaj
S.Durga Bhavani
Sabih Ahmad
Sadhna Arya, University of Delhi
Sagar
Sahil Gupta
Sakina Dhorajiwala, LibTech India
Samali Banerjee
Sameet Panda, Odisha Khadya Adhikar Abhijan
Samrudha Surana
Samyak Jain, Advocate
Sandeep Kumar Pattnaik
Sandeep Manudhane
Sandeep Yadav
Sandhya Gokhale, Forum Against Oppression of Women
Sandip
Saniya Khan Golandaz
Sanjay Palshiakar, University of Hyderabad
Sanjay Upadhyay, SWORD
Sanket
Sanketh D S
Sarada Mahesh
Sarath, Motherleaf
Sarika sinha
Sarosh
Satyabhama, IAS Retired CMD NSC Ministry of Agriculture
Saudha Kasim
Saumya
Saumya Kaul
Sautabh
Sayantan Chaudhuri
Shadab Ahmad
Shahvir Aga
Shaleen Jain
Shankar Gopalakrishnan, Chetna Andolan, Uttarakhand
Shantha Sinha
Sharachchandra Lele
Sharad Chandra Behar
Sharada Ganesh
Shardul Gopujkar, Parichay Legal Clinic
Shashi
Sheetal Fernandes
Shekar
Shevon Abraham Samuel
Shewli Kumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Shilpaa Anand, BITS-Pilani Hyderabad Campus
Shirish B Patel, Shirish Patel & Associates
Shiv
Shivangi, Amity Law School, Delhi
Shivani Yadav
Shobhit Sinha
Shounak Dewal
Shubham
Siddharth K J
Sikandar Warsi
Simrandeep
Siraj Dutta, Right to Food Campaign Jharkhand
Snehan Kekre, Streamlit, Inc
Solomon
Sonia Soni, SK Finance Ltd.
Sowjanya Chandrasekhar
Sowmya Dechamma, UoH
Soumya Chakraborty
SP Ambrose, Constitutional Conduct Group
Spandana L P
Sravya D
Sreechand
Sreedev Krishnkumar
Sreeharsha Thanneeru, Rythu Swarajya Vedika
Srishti
Srujana Bej
Stuti Guha
Subhodip Mukherjee
Sudeshna Sengupta
Sudha N
Sudipto GhoshSuhail Ahmad
Suhas Kolhekar
Suhasini Mulay
Sujata Patel, Kerstin Hesselgren Visiting Professor, Umea University
Sujay Monga
Sujay Naik, Zephyr
Sukla SenSumender
Sunaina
Sundar Burra, Member, Constitutional Conduct Group
Sunil Thamizh Kumar
Suprateek Bose
Suranjan Sinha, Independent researcher
Susan Dhavle
Sushant
Swati Bishnoi
Swati Narayan, Right to Food Campaign
Syed Ali Mujtaba
Syeda Hameed, Muslim Womens Forum
T Ramakrishnan
Taj Aingh
Tamanna Khan
Tanima Xavier
Tarangini, Azim Premji University
Teesta Setalvad
Tony, ATC
Tousif Tamboli
Tushar
Uma Shankari
Upendra R
Usha Raman, University of Hyderabad
V.P.Raja, Retd. IAS officer
Vandana Prabha
Varada Balachandran
Varsha Harisubramaniam
Varun
Vasudha Verma
Vasundhar, Exceleron
Venkat
Veronica Dungdung, Samajik Seva Sadan
Vicky Rathore
Vidya Subramanian
Vidyut Gore
Vignesh Balaji Velu
Vijay Bharatiya
Vijayendra Mohanty
Vinayak Varma
Vindhya
Vinish Gupta, Centre for Holistic Learning
Vir Bharat talwar
Vishal Talreja
Visvanathan V
Vivek
Vivek Dandekar
Vivek Jindal
Vivek Mathur
Yash Marwah, Let India Breathe
Yashasvi Karnena
Zakir Husain Memaya
Zishan
Zuber