Third parties and government authorites will not have access to the link between Aadhaar and Voter ID, said Union Minister of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju in response to a question by a few Lok Sabha MPs on February 4. When asked about the rationale given by the government for using Aadhaar to authenticate citizenship, Rijiju said, "Aadhaar is not the proof of citizenship." Amid huge controversy, the Parliament had recently passed a bill to link the Aadhaar database with voter rolls to weed out duplicate entries. Many parliamentarians opposed the bill, saying that it violates the Right to Privacy. What does the bill say? The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 looks to amend Section 23 of Representation of the People (RP) Act, 1950 and 1951. The central government has proposed that the electoral registration officer can require any person to “furnish the Aadhaar number” as per the provisions of the Aadhaar Act 2016 for ‘establishing the identity of the person’. These are the other amendments under Section 23 — Aadhaar may also be required from those already in electoral rolls: The bill said that the electoral registration officer can also ask those whose name is already in the electoral rolls to provide their Aadhaar number “for authentication of entries in electoral roll’, and also to identify if their names are in electoral rolls of more than one constituency; or to identify if his or her name is repeated more than once in the same constituency. Aadhaar details have to be furnished before…
