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Election Commission to start e-KYC for Voter IDs, as government considers linking Aadhaar to EPIC

Even as the government considers amending the law to require the linking of Voter IDs to Aadhaar, the Election Commission of India announced that it will now start issuing digital voter IDs and accept e-KYC, presumably Aadhaar-based, on the National Voters' Services Portal. The change could lay the groundwork to require that all Electoral Photo ID Cards, or EPICs, be linked to Aadhaar. This change has been a long time coming — the Election Commission was discussing the prospect last February with the Ministry of Law & Justice, and a senior EC official told MediaNama that a platform to link Aadhaar and EPIC would be created. The government said in a parliamentary response last year that it would amend the Representation of the People Act to facilitate this linking. The Election Commission has already been linking Aadhaar and EPICs since 2015, under the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP). Lakhs of voters were allegedly kicked off of voter lists in the run up to the 2019 General Election in the aftermath of NERPAP. Our take: The looming disenfranchisement risk Why is there such an aggressive move to link voter IDs with Aadhaar? To quote the government, the proposal is being mooted to "ensure preparation of error free electoral roll and to prevent duplication of entries". Is this the kind of problem that has the scale or severity to warrant a nationwide Aadhaar-EPIC linking mandate? "If they prescribe it in the law that it will be mandatory, then it…

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I cover the digital content ecosystem and telecom for MediaNama.

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