Ahead of the election in 2022, the Centre is planning to announce new electoral reforms. The Centre is planning to link both Aadhaar cards and voter id. Just like PAN-Aadhaar linking, seeding of the Aadhaar card with voter ID will now be allowed.

       However, this will be done voluntarily and will allow four attempts to register in the electoral rolls. Besides, from January 2022 onwards, first-time voters turning 18 will have a chance to register four times a year with four different cut-off dates. The Election Commission of India (ECI) had been pushing for multiple cut-off dates to allow more eligible people to register as voters.

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       Currently, for an election to be held in a particular year, only an individual who has attained the age of 18 years as of January 1 of that year or before is eligible to be enrolled in the voters’ list.

       The EC had told the government that the January 1 cut-off date set for the purpose deprives several youngsters of participating in the electoral exercise held in a particular year. Due to only one qualifying or cut-off date, a person attaining the age of 18 years on January 2 cannot be registered. Therefore, a person who turns 18 after January 1 will have to wait for the next year to get registered.

       The law ministry had recently told a parliamentary panel that “it is proposed to amend section 14(b) of the Representation of the People Act to insert four qualifying dates (or cut-off dates) — January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1 — of every year".

       In March, then law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had told Lok Sabha in a written reply that the poll panel has proposed to link electoral roll with the "Aadhaar ecosystem" with a "view to curb the menace of multiple enrolment of the same person at different places".

       In August 2015, a Supreme Court order on Aadhaar had put the brakes on the EC’s project to link UIDAI (Aadhaar) number with voters' electoral data to check multiple entries in electoral rolls.

       The poll panel was then collecting Aadhaar numbers as part of its National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP).

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       The poll panel has also been pressing the government to amend provisions of the Representation of the People Act allowing EC to seek Aadhaar numbers of those applying to be voters and those who are already part of the electoral rolls. Besides, the electoral law will also be made “gender neutral" for service voters.

       An army man’s wife is entitled to be enrolled as a service voter, but a woman army officer’s husband is not, according to provisions in the electoral law.

       The poll panel had asked the law ministry to replace the term ‘wife’ with ‘spouse’ in the provision in the Representation of the People Act related to service voters.

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