NEW DELHI: The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 incorporates various electoral reforms which have been discussed for a long time, government sources said on Tuesday.
The bill aimed at bringing about major electoral reforms was passed in the Lok Sabha on Monday amidst strong protests by the opposition who demanded its vetting by the standing committee.
According to the sources in the Modi government, registration in the electoral roll is done based on an application by a person who is eligible to be registered as a voter. This bill has a provision whereby the new applicant may voluntarily provide Aadhaar number along with the identity application. No application will be rejected because Aadhaar number has not been provided, they said.
The sources said Aadhaar linking with the electoral roll will solve one of the major problems in Electoral database management which are multiple enrolments of the same person at different places.
They said: “This may be due to the frequent shifting of residence by electors and getting enrolled in the new place without deleting the previous enrolment. Thus, the possibility of electors whose names appear in more than one electoral roll or at times more than once in the same electoral roll can be removed.”
As per the sources, once the Aadhaar linkage is achieved, the electoral roll data system will instantly alert the existence of previous registration(s) whenever a person applies for new registration. “This will help in cleaning the electoral roll to a great extent and facilitate elector registration in the location at which they are ‘ordinarily resident’,” they said.
