New Delhi | The Election Commission on Tuesday decided to explore linking voter cards with Aadhaar and said technical consultations between its experts and UIDAI for the exercise would "begin soon".

The poll panel said the linkage would be done according to prevailing legislation, the Supreme Court's directions on Aadhaar seeding and privacy concerns.

The decision followed a meeting the Election Commission (EC) held with the Union home secretary, legislative secretary (in the law ministry), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) secretary and the UIDAI CEO on the issue of voter card-Aadhaar seeding.

The government told the Rajya Sabha in April 2023 that linking Aadhaar details with voter identity cards had not started and that the exercise was "process driven" with no target or timelines set for the proposed exercise.

Names of those who do not link their Aadhaar details with the voters' list will not be struck off the electoral rolls, the government had asserted at that time.

In a statement on Tuesday, the poll authority said that while voting rights could only be granted to a citizen of India, according to Article 326 of the Constitution, Aadhaar establishes a person's identity and not citizenship or right to get enrolled as a voter.

"Therefore, it was decided that the linking of elector photo identity card (EPIC) with Aadhaar will be done only as per the provisions of Article 326 of the Constitution, sections 23(4), 23(5) and 23(6) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and in line with the Supreme Court judgment (of 2023)," it said.

Accordingly, technical consultations between UIDAI and the EC's technical experts "are to begin soon", it added.

Section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, as amended by the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, provides for electoral registration officers to require an existing or prospective elector to provide Aadhaar for establishing identity on a "voluntary" basis. The clause uses the term "may" while referring to the sharing of Aadhaar details.

The law allows voluntary seeding of voter rolls with the Aadhaar database. At this stage, it was not clear whether legislative steps would be taken in future to make linkage mandatory.

There has been a major opposition outcry over alleged irregularities in the issuance and cancellation of voter cards in recent months and several parties, including the Congress, Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal, have been raising these issues before the EC, in Parliament and at other platforms.

Political parties and activists have also been approaching courts, seeking greater transparency in poll processes and demanding further electoral reforms.

In a separate development, the Supreme Court on Tuesday noted the Election Commission's submission that it was willing to deliberate over the demand for uploading polling booth-wise voter turnout data on its website and asked the petitioners to make representations before the poll panel in 10 days.

The Congress said the EC agreeing to hold technical consultations between its experts and UIDAI to "clean up" voter lists was a clear acknowledgement of the charge the party made about suspicious names in electoral rolls.