A public interest litigation petition has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the Election Commission to link Aadhaar card details of individuals with their voter identity cards to curb bogus voting. The litigant claimed it would also help in purifying the electoral rolls.
When the case came up for admission before a Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and P.T. Asha on Friday, ECI counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan said the Commission did not have any objection to the petitioner’s plea, but it had to be examined in the light of a recent judgment delivered by the Supreme Court on the validity of Aadhaar.
He said the ECI would also have to look into the costs that would have to be incurred for the process. After hearing him, the judges suo motu included Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) as well as the Union Ministries of Law and Home as respondents to the case and ordered notices to them returnable by October 29.
M.L. Ravi, president of a registered political outfit, filed the case contending that the present process of conducting door-to-door verification of the electoral rolls was susceptible to errors. More often than not it ended up helping the political parties as well as the voters to indulge in all kinds of electoral malpractices. He claimed that linking Aadhaar with the voter’s ID card would help in removing all multiple entries found in the electoral rolls due to migration of voters from one place to another and keep a check on bogus voting. He said the courts would also be freed of the burden of hearing cases related to bogus voting during elections.
