Aadhaar Authentication of Electoral Rolls

Aadhaar-based electoral-roll authentication means using an Aadhaar number to help verify a person's identity in the voter-registration system. Section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 authorises electoral registration officers to seek Aadhaar numbers for identity verification and detecting duplicate registrations, subject to safeguards against exclusion.

What Section 23 authorises

The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 inserted subsections (4), (5) and (6) into Section 23, providing the statutory framework for Aadhaar-based electoral-roll authentication.

• Section 23(4) permits the electoral registration officer to require a person to furnish an Aadhaar number for establishing that person's identity.
• Section 23(5) permits the officer to seek Aadhaar numbers for authenticating electoral-roll entries and identifying registration of the same person in more than one constituency or more than once within the same constituency.
• These provisions support verification of electoral-roll entries; they do not make Aadhaar authentication a substitute for determining eligibility to be registered as an elector.

Safeguards against denial or deletion

Section 23(6) limits the consequences of being unable to furnish an Aadhaar number. Its protection applies where that inability arises from a sufficient cause prescribed under the rules.

• An application for inclusion in the electoral roll cannot be denied because of such inability to furnish or intimate an Aadhaar number.
• An existing electoral-roll entry cannot be deleted on that ground.
• The proviso allows the individual to furnish alternative documents prescribed under the rules.
• An officer's power to seek Aadhaar must therefore be read together with these statutory protections, rather than as an unconditional Aadhaar requirement for voter registration.

Identity authentication is not proof of citizenship

Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 expressly states that an Aadhaar number or its authentication does not, by itself, confer any right of citizenship or domicile.

• Under Section 16 of the RPA, 1950, a person who is not an Indian citizen is disqualified from registration in an electoral roll.
• Aadhaar-based identity verification cannot by itself establish citizenship or replace the electoral registration officer's examination of statutory eligibility.
• The distinction is between authenticating who a person is and determining whether that person is legally entitled to electoral registration.