An avoidable move

Linking Aadhaar with electoral rolls might create problems

The government is planning to pass legislation that would link the Aadhaar unique ID with the voter ID card. The government’s motivation for such a decision is easy to understand. The Aadhaar database has been used for de-duplicating beneficiaries across a wide variety of government programmes and it is easy to see how bureaucrats would see the linking of Aadhaar and the voter ID card as just the next step in an ongoing process of creating a complete list of Indians eligible for government programmes and, indeed, to vote. But there are many consequences of a linkage between Aadhaar and