SC notice to Centre, EC on plea against use of undisclosed software for voter profiling

The Supreme Court on Wednesday sought a response from the Union government and others on a plea alleging that Election Commission has indulged in "voter profiling" by deploying an "undisclosed software" to link voter records to Aadhaar.

A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha decided to examine the petition filed by Srinivas Kodali, an engineer from Hyderabad, saying, "It is an important issue".

The court issued notice to the Centre, the EC and others.

Kodali challenged the validity of the Telangana High Court's order which had dismissed his PIL on April 21, 2022.

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In his plea, the petitioner, an IIT Madras graduate, contended, in an effort to 'purify' electoral rolls, the Election Commission in 2015 suo motu deleted 46 lakh entries from the electoral rolls in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, linked Electors Photo Identity Card with Aadhaar, seeded EPIC data with the State Resident Data Hub and allowed the state governments to access and copy of EPIC data.

"While the EPIC-Aadhaar linking was carried out under the National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP'), rest of the decisions were carried out without specific policy, guidelines, or authorization in any form," the plea claimed.

"EC's actions to 'purify' electoral rolls using an automated process from data received from Aadhaar and state governments and without proper notice or consent from voters is a blatant infringement on the right to vote. Likewise, the EC's actions to permit electronic linkages between EPIC data, Aadhaar, and SRDH is an unconstitutional invasion on voter privacy and the right against voter profiling," it said.

The plea contended the High Court refused to consider that the EC deployed an undisclosed software to identify duplicate, dead, and shifted voters. The High Court further failed to see that there was no valid law, rule, or regulation to use a software or algorithm as an aid or substitute for verifying electoral rolls, it added.