The Minister of Law and Justice, Shri Kiren Rijiju in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today informed that the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, allows Electoral Registration Officers to require the existing or prospective elector to provide the Aadhaar number for the Purpose of establishing identity on a voluntary basis. The Election Commission of India (ECI)vide its instruction dated 4^thJuly,2022, has launched the programme to collect the Aadhaar number of existing and prospective electors on a voluntary basis from 1^stAugust, 2022 in all States and UTs. lt is voluntary to link Aadhaar with Voter ID and consent is obtained from the elector for Aadhaar authentication in Form 6B. There is no provision for withdrawing the consent. Linking of Aadhaar is process driven and no targets have been given for linking Aadhaar with EPIC.

The notification number S.O. 2803(E), dted17^th June, 2022 specifies the 1^st April, 2023 as the date on or before which every person whose name is included in the electoral roll may intimate his Aadhaar number in accordance with section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

The Unique ldentification Authority of lndia (UlDAl), under the Aadhaar(Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 and theregulations made thereunder, has made it compulsory for the centralised storage of all Aadhaar numbers in a different repository known as 'Aadhaar Data Vault'. The ECI strictly follows the guidelines prescribed by UIDAI and does not store the Aadhaar numbers in its database. The Aadhaar number is used only for authentication purposes and ECI does not retrieve any personal information from the UIDAI Aadhaar data base.

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