Use of Aadhaar data by BJP to woo voters: HC seeks EC report

Use of Aadhaar data by BJP to woo voters: HC seeks EC report

Chennai:26.03.2021 

The Madras high court on Wednesday chided the Election Commission over its failure to probe complaints about the Puducherry unit of the BJP illegally accessing Aadhaar data and using it to reach voters in the Union territory and asked it to file a report by March 26, reports Sureshkumar K.

“A matter of serious concern has been reported by the petitioner that a prominent political party has access to personal records of citizens to undertake a political campaign. It will not do for the ECI to say cyber crimes division is conducting an investigation. When the commission is up and about in all other matters and asserts its primacy and authority, it has to look into this allegation immediately and with the degree of seriousness that it deserves,” a bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy said.

‘952 groups created using Aadhaar data’

AAnand, president of the Democratic Youth Foundation of India’s Puducherry unit, said in his petition that local BJP candidates had obtained the mobile phone numbers of voters that are linked with Aadhaar and were using them to create WhatsApp groups in their respective constituencies for campaigning.

“Multiple WhatsApp groups have been formed in the Union territory using the same phone number specifically targeting voters in respective booths and constituencies through messages,” said advocate M N Sumathy, who is representing the petitioner.

When the petitioner tried to reach the administrator of one such group, he came to know there were 952 WhatsApp groups created with voter details obtained from Aadhaar data, Sumathy added.

The petitioner also said that voters have been receiving calls from the BJP seeking votes with accurate details such as names, election booths and constituencies from which they will be voting.