Bill to link Aadhaar with voter card to be tabled in Lok Sabha today

Bill to link Aadhaar with voter card to be tabled in Lok Sabha today

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:20.12.2021

Law minister Kiren Rijiju will introduce the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in the Lok Sabha on Monday.

The bill to amend the Representation of the People Act seeks to bring in key reforms including voluntary linkage of voter ID with Aadhaar so as to weed out bogus and duplicate entries in electoral rolls. The matter is listed in the legislative business of the Lower House for Monday.

The bill also provides that this amendment will not put any voters at any disadvantage as “no application for inclusion of name in the electoral rolls shall be denied and no entries in the electoral rolls shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed”. Such people will be allowed to furnish other alternative documents as may be prescribed, according to the bill.

The amendment will also provide registration of new voters on four qualifying dates in place of the existing January 1 of every year. At present, anyone turning 18 on or before January 1 will be eligible to be registered as a voter. Anyone born after January 1 will have to get enlisted only after a year. According to the bill, along with January 1, there will be three other qualifying dates — April 1, July 1 and October 1 — in every calendar year.

The proposed amendments also allow the elections to become gender neutral for service voters. The amendment will help replace the word ‘wife’ with the word ‘spouse’ making the statutes “gender neutral”. At present, an Armyman’s wife is entitled to be enrolled as a service voter, but a woman officer’s husband is not. With ‘wife’ being replaced by the term ‘spouse’, this will change.