New Delhi: The Election Commission has told the Supreme Court that it would make "clarificatory" changes in its forms for adding new voters and updating records of old ones in the electoral rolls that providing Aadhaar numbers for voter ID cards is optional. The Election Commission (EC) counsel contended before a bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud that the submission of the Aadhaar number was not mandatory under Rule 26-B of the Registration of Electors (Amendment) Rules 2022. The Election Commission has come out with a new rule on linking Aadhaar with voter lists to weed out duplicate entries.
The EC counsel submitted that nearly 66,23,00,000 Aadhaar numbers had already been uploaded in the process of finalising electoral rolls. The apex court was informed that the Aadhaar number was not mandatory under Rule 26-B of the Registration of Electors (Amendment) Rules 2022 and the EC was looking into issuing appropriate clarificatory changes in the forms introduced for that purpose.
