A nightmare in the making

If the Elector’s Photo Identification Card (EPIC) is indeed ‘unique’, why is the Election Commission of India (ECI) pushing to link this with another ‘unique’ number? Both EPIC and Aadhaar have been mired in controversies and both are known to have been duplicated. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) itself admits to having deleted millions of duplicate Aadhaar numbers.

The renewed push to link voter IDs with Aadhaar — a 10-year-old project of the ECI — and integrate the two data sets and biometric details has understandably been met with extreme scepticism. Vikram Hegde, a Supreme Court advocate, posted on X, “I don’t know why a bad idea gets such widespread support. Linking Aadhaar to Voter ID has two big problems: a) Not all Aadhaar bearers are citizens; b) Not all citizens have Aadhaar.”

Technology writer Anupam Saraph is also sceptical. Aadhaar, he points out, is a certificate of residence, not a proof of citizenship. Aadhaar numbers can be switched off by the UIDAI without assigning any reason; by its own admission, it switched off 8.5 million issued numbers until 2016. Aadhaar has never been audited and even genuine voters can find their numbers deleted from the database. Reasons will never be assigned and the UIDAI can claim that your biometric details failed or you need to redo the biometrics.

Another technology writer and activist Srinivas Kodali, writing in The Hindu, argues that linking voter IDs with Aadhaar may enable political parties to micro-target voters who they know will not vote for them. “The assumption is that only the ECI will do the deletion,” he wrote, “…but the data [has] gone beyond the ECI to political parties. The ECI can claim they are not sharing it, but political parties are collecting voter data on the ground or taking it from government officials. Microtargeting through Aadhaar and phone numbers is the issue.”

The Supreme Court too ruled against such linkage and has repeatedly cautioned that any such attempt must strictly remain ‘voluntary’. On 19 March, the Indian Express reported that the Union law ministry will now amend Form 6B, under which providing Aadhaar details will still be ‘optional’ on the face of it, but voters who do not share the details must now explain their reasons.

Flagging the risks associated with linking Aadhaar to voter identities, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has raised several critical concerns:

Disenfranchisement risk: IFF emphasises that linking Aadhaar to voter IDs could lead to mass disenfranchisement, particularly affecting marginalised communities. Past initiatives, such as the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), resulted in millions losing their voting rights due to administrative errors related to Aadhaar verification.

Data security concerns: Data breaches can lead to unauthorised access, compromising voter privacy and security, leading to manipulation of electoral processes.

Biometric failures: Aadhaar’s biometric authentication has a failure rate of around 12 per cent, says the IFF, pointing out that such failures will prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots.

Targeted manipulation: There are fears that linking these databases could lead to targeted political messaging based on demographic data, and other forms of manipulation of the electorate during poll campaigns.

The ECI’s push to link voter ID cards with Aadhaar is not new, though. It had begun within a year of Narendra Modi taking over the reins of government — on 3 March 2015, to be precise, when the ECI launched the NERPAP. The then chief election commissioner H.S. Brahma said the exercise was optional, that the purpose was to weed out bogus voters and that every single linkage was with the consent of the voter concerned.

The initiative was halted when the Supreme Court flagged concerns in a landmark judgement of 2018, upholding citizens’ right to privacy as a fundamental right. It ruled that individuals cannot be denied services or prevented from voting for failing to provide their Aadhaar number. This effectively meant that while Aadhaar could be used for identification, it couldn’t be made mandatory for voter registration or voting.

The court also emphasised that linking Aadhaar to voter IDs could lead to disenfranchisement. However, by the time this judgement came, the Aadhaar numbers of 320 million voters had already been seeded in the voter database. It’s germane to remember that ahead of the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections, a staggering 6.6 million voters found they had lost their voting rights. There were allegations that certain categories of voters were disproportionately affected.

According to recent media reports, the ECI has already collected the Aadhaar details of over 660 million voters. Once again, it claims the details have been shared ‘voluntarily’ and that the two data sets have not yet been linked. In other words, Aadhaar numbers have not yet been used to weed out duplicate entries in the electoral rolls.

In December 2021, the Lok Sabha passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill seeking to link voter identities with Aadhaar, again with the stated purpose of avoiding voter duplication in the electoral rolls. At every point, the government and the ECI have maintained that the sharing of Aadhaar numbers is ‘voluntary’, but the situation on the ground is vastly different, with polling personnel and even returning officers often turning away voters on the pretext that their voter IDs aren’t linked to Aadhaar. “‘Voluntary’ is effectively mandatory,” quips Apar Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation.

Amid ongoing controversies over voter lists, the current Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has renewed the push to link Aadhaar with voter IDs. In Maharashtra, an unusually high number of voter registrations were recorded in just five months leading up to the recent assembly elections — surpassing total additions over the previous five years.

In Delhi, a political campaign allegedly led to largescale voter deletions. Irregularities have surfaced in voters’ photo I-cards (EPIC) as well, with multiple cards found to be linked to the same EPIC number. Even the ECI, which now has a well-earned reputation for stonewalling criticism, was forced to issue a clarification that irregularities will be rectified.

Jagdeep Chhokar of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) told National Herald that despite the Supreme Court’s observations, the ECI has persisted with efforts to integrate Aadhaar with voter lists. In violation of the court’s order, the Commission has been sending officials for a door-to-door collection of Aadhaar numbers, including his own residence, he said.

Cyber law expert Pawan Duggal sees this as an attempt to further expand the already gigantic Aadhaar ecosystem. The architecture of Aadhaar and voter lists are fundamentally different, he says, and integrating them could create great challenges, given especially Aadhaar’s security vulnerabilities. He warns that Aadhaar data is readily available on the dark web, and India lacks strong cybersecurity laws to protect it. Adding the EPIC number to this interconnected web of sensitive data raises serious concerns about privacy and security, he says.

Cybersecurity experts have long warned that consolidating multiple personal identifiers into a single database increases the risk of largescale data breaches. If Aadhaar-linked voter records are compromised, hackers could potentially access a vast trove of personal information, including financial details, mobile records and voting history. This could pave the way for not just identity theft and financial fraud, but also targeted disinformation campaigns, political profiling and other forms of voter manipulation.

Chhokar believes the ECI is not acting autonomously in persisting with the project to link Aadhaar with voter IDs; he sees it as another step towards the nightmare of ‘One Nation, One Election’.