EC has stopped the EPIC-Aadhaar linkage in the wake of last week’s SC ruling
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Hyderabad: The Election Commission will go ahead with purification of the voters list in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh by using de-duplication software in place of Aadhaar to weed out duplication and bogus votes.
The EC has stopped the EPIC-Aadhaar linkage in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court ruling that Aadhaar cards should be used only for distribution of LPG, ration etc and not for other purposes.
However, Aadhaar exemption will not bring any relief to voters who changed their address or have double votes as they were already identified by officials during ground verification on duplication as part of special drive conducted by EC since March this year.
Around 58.91 lakh voters were already identified in TS and AP as not staying in the address mentioned on the EPIC cards and they would lose their cards irrespective of Aadhaar linkage or not, if they fail to respond to EC notices within a week.
Notices were already issued to those voters last week who were found to be not residing in the address mentioned on the EPIC cards. They were given two weeks time to respond and still one week is left. If they fail to respond by then, their EPIC cards will be cancelled.
Voters can apply afresh for EPIC cards based on their new address now, if their old address cards are removed. Such voters will be issued new cards in a month. “The ongoing purification of voters list will go on as scheduled. Instead of Aadhaar, we will use a special software to detect duplication and bogus votes. During ground-level verification itself, we found several duplications, address changes and cases of ‘locked houses’. We will first deal with ‘changed address cases’, where notices were served,” said Bhanwar Lal, Chief Electoral Officer.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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