Voter profiling? SC agrees to hear PIL on this

New Delhi, Dec 14.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that it would hear a PIL alleging that over 2 million voters were deleted from the voters’ lists in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as it involved a very “serious issue”.

A two-judges bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud issued notices to the Election Commission on the petition. The other respondents were the Union government and the two states. The other judge on the bench was Justice P.S. Narasimha.

The PIL, filed by an engineer Srinivas Kodali, alleged that instead of drawing up the voters’ lists on its own as mandated under Article 324 of the Constitution, the Election Commission had enlisted the help of the government to finish the task.

The petition was earlier dismissed by the Telangana High Court.

“The ECI’s impugned actions to ‘purify’ the electoral rolls – using an automated process; from data received from Aadhaar and state governments; and without proper notice or consent from voters – is a blatant infringement on the right to vote,” the petition argued by advocate Gautam Bhatia said.

“… the ECI’s actions to permit electronic linkages between EPIC data, Aadhaar, and SRDH is an unconstitutional invasion on voter privacy and the right against voter profiling.”

It will lead to political exclusion and disenfranchisement, making elections a sham, the PIL contended.

In 2015, the Election Commission suo motu deleted lakhs of entries from the electoral rolls in Andhra and Telangana; linked Electors’ Photo Identity Card with Aadhaar; seeded EPIC data with the State Resident Data Hub; and allowed the state governments to access and copy EPIC data, it alleged.

While the EPIC-Aadhaar linking was carried out under the National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme, the rest were carried out without any specific policy, guidelines, or authorization, the petition filed by the Hyderabad resident, who is also a technology researcher and an IIT Madras graduate, said.

He said that he had filed the PIL in 2018 apprehending that millions of unsuspecting voters would be unable to vote during the elections to follow in December 2018.

A large number of voters in Hyderabad found their names deleted from the electoral rolls on the day of elections while the petition remained pending.

However, three years later, the High Court dismissed the PIL on the ground that it “was filed in the year 2018 and much water has flown down the Ganges” since then.

The ECI’s impugned actions to ‘purify’ the electoral rolls – using an automated process; from data received from Aadhaar and state governments; and without proper notice or consent from voters– is a blatant infringement on the right to vote, the petition said.

Likewise, the ECI’s actions to permit electronic linkages between EPIC data, Aadhaar, and SRDH is an unconstitutional invasion on voter privacy and the right against voter profiling. Despite these glaring violations, dismissed the PIL.

A similar de-duplication exercise conducted previously in 2015 had a failure rate of 92%, wherein the software flagged 37,54,648 voters as duplicates, while only 2,47,789 voters (8%) were found to be duplicate voter entries after field verification, it said.

The appeal filed in the top court said that the ECI conceded that the voter records were linked to Aadhaar without valid authority under the law.

The EC also failed to justify the necessity to seed and share voter records with Aadhaar and SRDH datasets and also permit state governments to access and make copies of voter records. It also conducted the exercise in a clandestine manner and without valid notice and consent.

As a consequence, millions were deprived of their right to vote without due process. The electronic linkages have also exposed voters to be profiled, targeted, and manipulated by entities with access to the data. ECI’s actions, therefore, threatens the sanctity and integrity of elections.