Rajya Sabha passes bill linking Aadhaar, voter ID; opposition cries foul

The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, that mandates linking of a person's Aadhaar card with his/her electoral ID.

The bill was passed by a voice vote even as the opposition walked out, demanding it be sent to a select committee.

Congress MP and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh alleged the passage of the bill was similar in manner to the passage of the now-repealed farm laws last year.

Ramesh tweeted, “Today in the Rajya Sabha the Chair didn’t even allow a vote on the opposition motion to send the Electoral Roll-Aadhaar Bill to a Select Committee. The Opposition walked out in protest. Like the farm Bills, this Bill too was passed most undemocratically!”

TMC MP Derek O'Brien shared a video on Twitter in which he accused the government of “bulldozing” the bill through Parliament. O'Brien claimed Rajya Sabha TV was “censored” from showing opposition MPs protesting in the well of the house. “This is worse than the Emergency... Parliament is being killed,” O'Brien said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the government claimed the bill would solve the “major problem” of multiple enrolment of the same person at different places and help in “cleaning” the voters' list to a great extent.

No application will be rejected on the grounds that Aadhaar number has not been provided, sources told PTI. Aadhaar linking with electoral roll will solve “one of the major problems” in electoral database management that is multiple enrolment of the same person at different places, they said.

This may be due to the frequent shifting of residence by electors and getting enrolled in the new place without deleting the previous enrolment, the sources noted.

Thus, the possibility of electors whose names appear in more than one electoral roll or at times more than once in the same electoral roll can be removed, they said.

(With PTI inputs)