Hyderabad: An independent analysis has revealed that the office of the Election Commission of Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh has collected Aadhaar details of voters without their consent.
Another crucial document that has surfaced shows that the office of the Election Commission TS & AP asked its parent agency, Election Commission of India, to extend the view of Aadhaar-EPIC data. A letter written by the Chief Electoral Officer, TS & AP, to the ECI, said: ‘We request the ECI to pursue with the UIDAI for extending the facility of giving DSDV tool so that Aadhaar-EPIC linking in both the states would be fully completed at the earliest.’
The third letter substantiates the claim that the ECI sought voter details from the UIDAI and this happened without the consent of cardholders.
"The Election Commission deleted a significant number of voters in TS and AP, but the fact is the EC, without seeking permission of voters, collected Aadhaar details from the UIDAI. The EC is supposed to collect data from individuals and not the government. We now don’t know to what extent this data has been utilised,” said Mr Kodali.
When the UIDAI was questioned about providing Aadhaar details to the ECI, it claimed that "Aadhaar can be used to build voters’ profiles." Apart from the fact that it is not the business of the Election Commission to build voters’ profiles, the UIDAI also did not inform the Supreme Court that the EC had asked it to link Aadhaar with voters’ ID.
