Aadhaar-Voter ID card linking: SC to hear plea against Election Law Amendment Act

New Delhi: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a plea by Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala challenging the Election Law Amendment Act that enables linking electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem.

A bench of justices D Y Chandrachud and A S Bopanna is likely to take up the petition.

The Congress leader, in his plea, submitted that the linking of the cards infringes upon the fundamental right of privacy of citizens and is unconstitutional and ultra vires the Constitution”.

Linking of Aadhaar data with Electronic Electoral Photo Identity Card data will allow the personal and private data of voters to be available to a statutory authority and shall impose a limitation on the voters, i.e., the voters will now have to establish their identity before the Electoral Registration Officer (Respondent No. 2) by furnishing their respective Aadhaar details.

The situation will further be aggravated by the fact that at present there are no laws for protecting the data of citizens, the plea said.

It claimed the amendment may even enable voter profiling as all the demographic information linked to Aadhaar shall be linked with the Voter ID.

This can, in theory, also increase the possibility of disenfranchisement/intimidation based on the identity of voters.

“This may even increase chances of voter surveillance and the commercial exploitation of private sensitive data of voters, it said.