Election Laws (Amendment) Bill brought keeping UP polls in mind: Chowdhury

Congress Lok Sabha MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury alleged that the passage of the bill in Lok Sabha is related to the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

Congress Lok Sabha MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury while demanding that Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to link Aadhaar with the electoral roll, should be sent to the standing committee, alleging that the passage of the bill in Lok Sabha is related to the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

"It has been passed keeping in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in mind... I think the bill was brought in to keep many people away from exercising their electoral voting right," said Chowdhury.

"I don't know why the government was in hurry to pass Election Laws (Amendment) Bill. It should have been sent to a standing committee. We still don't have a data protection law. This may impact people's voting rights," he added.

Amid uproar by the opposition, Lok Sabha passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill on Monday.

Speaking to ANI, Kiren Rijiju said the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill would allow the electoral roll to be linked with Aadhar cards. It will be optional, not mandatory but it will help us to sieve out fake voters.

Rijiju said that there should be a proper discussion on election reforms. The Opposition was asked to participate and voice their opinions in the discussion, but they created chaos.

Rijiju said, "The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill proposes to replace the word 'wife' with 'spouse' to make the act (Representation of the People Act of 1951) gender-neutral. It will also expand the limits of the election premises acquisition."

"Even after 18 years, the system said that one has to wait a whole year to exercise their voting rights if they could not register on January 1 (of the year of revision of electoral roll). This bill will allow 4 qualifying dates a year to register as voters," Rijiju said.

The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing identity."

The Bill also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to get Aadhaar numbers from "persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in the electoral roll, and to identify registration of the name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency.