New Delhi - The Election Commission of India (EC) on Tuesday renewed its bid for linking Aadhaar with voter identity card, in an effort to clean up electoral rolls.
The union law ministry is likely to move a cabinet note soon, seeking to bring a new law to give EC the relevant powers.
Senior EC officials on Tuesday, including chief election commissioner Sunil Arora and election commissioners Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra raised the issue in a meeting with senior officials from legislative department of the ministry of law and justice led by secretary Narayan Raju and additional secretary Rita Vashishth. The meeting was called to discuss various aspects of pending electoral reforms.
According to a senior EC official, the union law ministry is working on a cabinet note to ready a new law which would give the poll panel “statutory authority” to collect Aadhaar numbers of both existing voter id holders and new applicants. This would also lead to amendment of the Representation of People's Act (RPA) which is the guiding legislation for electoral processes in India.
The developments comes in the backdrop of the EC writing to the Centre in August, requesting that the RPA be amended to allow it to seek Aadhaar numbers of those applying to be voters and those who are already part of voters list.
In August 2015, the Supreme Court had halted EC's project to link Aadhaar numbers with voters' electoral data as part of its National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme.
