The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Centre and others on a plea claiming that the Election Commission of India has indulged in voter profiling through its decision to link voter identity cards, Aadhaarand the State Residential Data Hub (SRDH).

A bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha said the petition had raised important legal questions and sought responses from the Centre, EC and the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Petitioner Srinivas Kodali, a resident of Hyderabad and a graduate of IIT Madras, had moved the Supreme Court, challenging an Andhra Pradesh High Court order that had dismissed his plea.

“The ECI has effectively created a surveillance architecture given that the Aadhaardatabase and SRDH contain sensitive information on voters, including religion, caste, tribe, ethnicity, language, records of entitlement, income and medical history, which is now linked to voter information,” the petition filed through advocate Sai Vinod said.

“The high court failed to appreciate that voter profiling allows political actors to segment people into ‘interest groups’ and either selectively target or ignore them from electoral process — all of which interferes with free and fair conduct of election,” the petition added.