Election Commission looks at December deadline for linking Aadhaar with voter ID card

Though the Election Commission had hoped to complete linking of voters' ID details with their Aadhaar data by August 15, enabling an error-free electoral roll, it is now looking at a more realistic deadline of 2015-end while also ruling out 100% coverage.

With only 34 crore voters having voluntarily furnished their Aadhaar numbers for seeding with EPIC, a senior EC functionary told TOI that the commission was consulting the chief electoral officers of 12 states where the progress has been slow, to review the timeline for the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), launched on March 3 with an August 15 target for completion.

"The CEOs of these states, including UP and Bihar, have been asked to identify the obstacles to EPIC-Aadhaar linkage, including technology and infrastructure issues, and accordingly indicate a realistic timeline for the project," the EC official said.

Though the CEOs will formally communicate their "achievable" timelines by the end of this month, indications are that they are looking at a December 31 deadline. "Our goal is to use the Aadhaar-EPIC linkage to weed out errors in the 2016 rolls," the official said.

For now, the Aadhaar data furnished by 34 crore electors is being processed by the electoral registration officers concerned. EROs will pre-verify the details by matching the Aadhaar number fed by the voter with the UIDAI database. "This process takes time, depending on the wherewithal and systems available at the ERO level. The summary revision for next year's rolls has been announced and we hope to hear from the CEOs concerned by this month-end, on the realistic deadline for NERPAP," the official said.

The EC clarified that the Aadhaar-EPIC seeding exercise was completely voluntary, as per the Supreme Court's directions. "So, as long as a voter chooses to link his Aadhaar number with EPIC, nobody will be able to misuse his voter ID for impersonation or bogus voting," the official said.