AA Edit | Ensure Citizens’ Data Protected

The decision of the Election Commission of India to discuss the possibility of linking elector photo identity card (Epic) to Aadhaar number of all the voters with the Union government is to be welcomed as it forms part of the poll body’s efforts to make the election process foolproof.

However, it must ensure that all the tools in the exercise pass muster when it comes to transparency.

The need to come up with a better system to maintain the sanctity of the voters list, which is the first and most important step towards ensuring a fair election, has been felt after the Trinamul Congress came up with solid proof of the existence of duplicate voter identity cards. The Congress, too, has alleged massive foul play in the voters’ list on the heels of the Maharashtra legislative assembly polls.

Linking the Aadhaar number to the voter identity card is indeed a way to ensure that there is no duplication of the document but the Aadhaar system itself has too many flaws. The first and foremost of which is that Aadhaar has no legal backing except for its limited usage when a citizen receives government’s financial aid.

No government, neither the United Progressive Alliance government which introduced it nor the NDA government which gave it some legal sanctity, thought it necessary to come up with comprehensive legislation that will address several issues, including data privacy, so that it can be a single point reference to the identity of a citizen. There have been umpteen instances proving that the Aadhaar data is compromised and the government had little by way of answer when its data protection mechanism was questioned in the Supreme Court.

The EC must come up with better systems to make the electoral process more transparent, but it must ensure that tools it uses add to its efforts, and not otherwise. This is in fact an opportunity for the Union government to address the shortcomings in the Aadhaar project. Now we have a voters’ list and an Aadhaar system that are prone to manipulation. We should aim to improve both if we are to marry them. Everyone knows that two wrongs do not make a right.