New Delhi: The Election Commission was urged by several political parties including the ruling BJP to link Aadhaar number of voter with elections card numbers to remove duplicate Identities, the poll panel said.

“Political parties urged the Commission to link Aadhaar numbers with electors’ detail for better electoral roll management,” an EC statement said

The statement by the Election Commission came after an all-party meet convened to discuss the coming Assembly polls in four states to be held later this year and also the Lok Sabha polls which is due next year.

The meeting was held between seven recognized national parties along with state-level recognized political parties. But only 41 attended out of 58 parties.

Two of the Election Commission functionaries who attended the meeting told that “25 percent” of the total 41 parties made such a demand during the meeting.

The BJP said in a statement that it had told election panel that immediate steps are needed to maintain voter list in alphabetical order in order to delete all those bogus and duplicate names.

“Initiative could be taken for making a pan India initiative. This could be successfully implemented if the voter registration is linked to Aadhar,” the BJP said.

The earlier attempt made by Election Commission during a project to link Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) (Aadhaar) number voter’s electoral data to check duplicate entries in electoral rolls was put to a halt by the Supreme Court back in August 2015.

At that time, the commission had directed all its chief electoral officers in every state and Union Territories to “suspend with immediate effect till further orders” regarding all activities to collect and feed Aadhaar number of voters. The move was known as National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP).

The apex court made it quite clear in its August 2015 judgement that Aadhaar card will be considered optional for availing various kind of welfare schemes by the government and the personal information of the card holders shall not be shared by any authority.

“The UIDAI (Universal Identification Authority of India)/Aadhar will not be used for any other purposes except PDS, kerosene and LPG distribution system,” it said.

Other issues such as paid news also came up for discussion among political parties present in the meeting and suggested to make it an electoral offence to curb this menace, the statement said.

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