Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021

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• Introducing The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, the Union Law Minister said the legislation will end bogus voting in the country and make the electoral process more credible.

Proposed changes in the Bill

• Linking Aadhaar to the Voter ID: The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to ask for Aadhaar number from “persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in the electoral roll.
  • And also to identify registration of names of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency.
• Voluntarily link Aadhaar data to electoral rolls: Amendment bill makes it clear that no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed.
  • Such people will be allowed to furnish other documents as may be prescribed.
• Representation of the People Act, 1950 and 1951: Various sections of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and 1951 will be amended.
  • Section 23 of the RP Act, 1950 will be amended to allow linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem “to curb the menace of multiple enrolment of the same person in different places.
  • Section 14 of the RP Act, 1950 will allow having four “qualifying” dates for eligible people to register as voters.

Arguments in favor of the Bill

• Electoral database management: Aadhaar linking with electoral roll will solve one of the major problems in electoral database management which is multiple enrolment of the same person at different places.
  • This may be due to the frequent shifting of residence by electors and getting enrolled in the new place without deleting the previous enrolment.
• To stop bogus voting: Government is attempting to stop bogus voting.
• Clean up electoral rolls: It will help clean up electoral rolls and facilitate elector registration in the location at which they are “ordinarily resident”.
• No duplication: The possibility of electors whose names appear in more than one electoral roll or at times more than once in the same electoral roll can be removed.

Arguments against the bill

• Bill will curb the people’s personal liberty: Dismissing the apprehensions of the opposition on the bill as “baseless”, the Government said opposition members were “misinterpreting” the Supreme Court judgment on personal liberty.
  • Bill violates the Supreme Court judgment on Justice K S Puttaswamy case.
• Potential for data breach: The linkage would open the ecosystem to a possibility of a data breach by any agency or non-state actors.
• Infringe on the fundamental rights: Opposition parties said it will infringe on the fundamental rights of citizens.
• Standing committee: Opposing the bill, some leaders demanded that the bill must be sent to the standing committee concerned for scrutiny.
• No data protection law: India doesn’t have the data protection law; we can’t force such a bill on people.
• Voting is a legal right: It is beyond the legislative competence of the Aadhaar Act to be linked with the electoral laws.
  • Bill will suppress people’s right to exercise franchise freely.
  • It will curb the rights of the SCs and STs in exercising the franchise freely.
• Against Aadhar: Aadhaar is meant for the residents of India and all residents are not Indians. By linking the Aadhaar with the electoral process, we are potentially giving the voting rights to non-citizens.

Source: HT