Election Commission To Meet Key Officers On March 18; Will The Integration Resolve Voter Roll Issues? News24 –

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has called for a discussion with the Home Secretary, Secretary Legislative Department and CEO UIDAI with the Commission, on the linking of EPIC and Aadhaar on March 18. The meeting is scheduled in the Election Commission on Tuesday. Moreover, the ECI has invited suggestion from all national and state parties by April 30. This has been done to address any unresolved electoral issues at the level of Electoral Registration Officers (ERO), District Election Officers (DEO), or Chief Electoral Officers (CEO).

The meeting comes against the backdrop of the allegations of irregularities in electoral rolls by the opposition.

ECI earlier on March 10, stated that the matter related to duplicate voter id card is a “legacy issue.” It had also directed states to remove all discrepancies in the elector’s photo identity card during annual electoral roll updates.

Clarification on the EPIC number was also given. The poll body stated that an elector can cast a vote only at their designated polling station irrespective of the EPIC number. It further said that to allay any apprehensions, all cases of duplicate EPIC numbers will be resolved within three months’ time by ensuring a unique EPIC number for the existing electors having duplicate EPIC numbers and for future electors as well.

Notably, the Trinamool Congress had raised the issue of electors in West Bengal and other states having the same EPIC number. It le EC to acknowledge that some state chief electoral officers had used the wrong alphanumeric series while issuing EPIC numbers.

Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number is a 10-digit unique identification number assigned by the ECI to each registered voter.

ECI On Aadhaar-EPIC Linking

After an amendment to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, in 2021 enabled Aadhaar linking with EPIC. The ECI began collecting Aadhaar numbers from electors on a voluntary basis in 2022.  However, the EC is yet to link the two databases. This was done to aid the EC in detecting duplicate registration of the voters to clean up the electoral rolls. But the Aadhaar-EPIC linking was not made mandatory. The ECI had justified the reason for integration which aimed to improve accessibility to voting and reducing voter fraud. However, people expressed concern about demographic information being exposed to EPIC database.