NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to 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 D Y Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha decided to examine the petition filed by Srinivas Kodali, an engineer from Hyderabad, saying, "It is an important issue".
Kodali had earlier approached the Telangana High Court which dismissed his PIL on April 21, 2022.
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.
The petitioner raised following questions of law for consideration:
A. Whether the voters have a right to access the source code and algorithm of the software used by the Election Commission of India for modifying electoral rolls?
B. Whether the voters have the right to receive an electronic audit trail of any changes to the electoral rolls including deletion of voter records?
C. Whether the use of automated systems for deleting or to assist deleting a large group of voters satisfies the test of proportionality to justify the infringement on the right to vote and other rights flowing from Articles 14, 19(1)(a), and 21 of the Constitution?
D. Whether the right to informational privacy recognized b this Honble Court in K. S. Puttaswamy vs. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, encompasses a right against voter profiling?
E. Whether the mandate for electronic seeding or other linkages between voter IDs and government-owned databases for preparing electoral rolls violates the right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21?
F. Whether the electronic linkages between voter IDs and government-owned databases for the purpose voter registration or verification violates the duty of ECI to conduct elections in free and fair manner under Article 324?
