ECI to begin linking of Aadhaar data with EPIC

New Delhi, Mar 20: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has said that it will set the ball rolling on the process of linking the Aadhaar data of electors with the Elector Photo Identification Card (EPIC) database, in an apparent bid to weed out the problem of duplicate EPICs. But the commission said that the operation will be done “in line with” the Supreme Court’s judgement of 2023, when the poll body had told the top court that linking Aadhaar with EPICs was not mandatory.

“...It was decided that the linking of EPIC with Aadhaar will be done only as per the provisions of Article 326 (eligible people entitled to be registered as an elector) of the Constitution, (under) Representation of People’s Act and in line with Supreme Court judgement of 2023…Accordingly, technical consultations between UIDAI and the technical experts of ECI are to begin soon,” said ECI in its release.

The Commission emphasised the “Aadhaar card only establishes the identity of a person”, and that voting rights are given to the citizens of India. The decision was taken at a meeting in New Delhi comprising Chief Election Commissioner Kumar Gyanesh, election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi along with the secretaries of the ministry of electronics and information technology, Union home ministry, legislative department of law and justice ministry, and with the Chief Executive Officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India, the nodal body for Aadhaar.
The high-level meeting came days after ECI had sent a note containing Gyanesh Kumar’s speech to all Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) where he said that “all attempts should be made to link Aadhaar (with the electoral roll)”.