Aadhaar to link with electoral rolls to remove bogus voters

HYDERABAD: The Election Commission would launch a drive from March 1 to link Aadhaar number with electoral rolls in a bid to weed out multiple voter cards and bogus voters and put in place an authentic database.

Chief Election Commissioner H S Brahma told reporters here today that this 'Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Drive' (ERPAD) across all the 676 districts is proposed to be completed by August 15 this year.

The idea is to prepare "a 100 per cent pucca" national electoral roll data, he said, after attending a workshop on Aadhaar linking with electoral rolls here.

The CEC appealed to people to upload their Aadhaar number on the National Voter Service Portal ( NVSP), launched on January 25 this year.

Asked if there was any move to introduce online voting, he said it would need a constitutional amendment, and the opinion on the desirability of online voting was divided.

"They (political parties) still believe we have to go with Indian machines (electronic voting machines)," he said.

The CEC also said that some eight lakh old, pre-2006 EVMs would be condemned (phased out).

When asked if there was any proposal to make the voting compulsory, he said, "Nothing so far".

On the EC's take on political parties not implementing election manifestos, he said: "What punishment can we give? We cannot hang him...we cannot kill him. It's best to leave it to voters."

Regarding Telangana government's request on delimitation of Assembly segments to increase the number to 153 from 119, Brahma said it needed a constitutional amendment and it was for the union government to take a call.