Aadhaar-linked voter ID can be an EPIC change

There are several areas where the poll regulator must act with utmost caution to preserve public trust in the process

The sanctity of one eligible citizen, one vote forms the foundation of India’s electoral democracy — it is against this verity that the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s move to link the Elector Voter Identification Card (EPIC) to Aadhaar needs to be seen. Aadhaar’s biometric-based verification establishes a person’s identity with near infallibility, and to that end, a centralised EPIC database being mapped against voters’ Aadhaar can serve several authentication ends — from deduplication of EPICs for the same individual to getting rid of any fake EPIC in circulation. Duplicate EPICs have been at the centre of many complaints by political parties over the inviolateness of the electoral process in the country. Such controversies can shake public trust in the poll regulator’s credibility.

The linking must be done in a fair manner — it is not mandatory at present, in keeping with a 2023 judgment of the Supreme Court, and the ECI must not try to make it otherwise (HT Photo)

It is here that Aadhaar linking and, subsequently, biometric-based authentication can help. That said, there are several areas where the poll regulator must act with utmost caution to restore public trust. First, the linking must be done in a fair manner — it is not mandatory at present, in keeping with a 2023 judgment of the Supreme Court, and the ECI must not try to make it otherwise. There have been instances of Aadhaar authentication failing for genuine beneficiaries/individuals in other use-cases due to factors such as poor connectivity, biometrics becoming unreadable, etc. Second, there must be periodic ground-truthing to make the process robust and free from any possible manipulation. Third, the highest level of security must be maintained for the linked data to engender wide trust against possible misuse.

Voter trust in the electoral process has sustained since the first poll because successive governments and the poll regulator have acted, to a great degree, with unimpeachable impartiality and integrity. The new paradigm, hopefully, will further this pact between the citizen and the State.