
Three EPIC hurdles in Aadhaar linking
EPIC — from commitments made in court to the legal amendments required and the political opposition that is bound to follow.
First is the question of the 66.23 crore Aadhaar numbers already collected by the poll panel until 2023. Shared voluntarily by EPIC holders, the 12-digit Aadhaar numbers have been «seeded» against Voter ID cards but the two databases have not been linked till date.
The exercise to «seed» further Aadhaar numbers is said to have been paused amid court cases in 2023, holding back the planned linkage of the two databases. The linkage, at least of the existing 66.23 crore, has been mulled for a while now but privacy concerns and legal hurdles stand in the way whenever deliberations have been held.
Looming larger are political sensitivities. It has largely been agreed in the ECI that initiating the linking process amid election cycles could run into serious political controversies and unnecessary suspicions would end up marring or worse still, stalling the plan.
Finding political «peace time» for the linkage to go smoothly has hardly been possible after the 2022 legal amendment that has enabled «seeding» of Aadhaar — given the series of high voltage elections that have followed.
There are also niggling questions around the efficacy of linking half the database- will de-duplication of the electoral rolls actually be achieved without the entire electoral roll not linked to Aadhaar?
Opinion is divided as further steps will be required either way — from developing/upgrading the «linking» software to the process of manual de-duplication using the software. This target goal of linkage, therefore, brings us to the next major question.