The Trinamool Congress has objected to the Election Commission’s efforts to link EPICs to the Aadhaar database, citing a 2022 CAG audit that highlighted duplicate Aadhaar and poor biometrics.

Trinamool MPs marched from Parliament to Nirvachan Sadan with placards of duplicate Elector’s Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) — an anomaly raised by Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in February. The EC had admitted the error and promised to rectify it in three months.

In a memorandum to the EC on Friday, Trinamool’s parliamentary party said: “The CAG also noted that the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) has not prescribed any specific proof, document, or process to confirm whether a person who is applying for Aadhaar has resided in India for the period specified under rules and stated that ‘there is no assurance that all the Aadhaar holders in the country are ‘residents’ as defined in the Aadhaar Act’.

“Most importantly, the CAG said that UIDAI has been generating and issuing Aadhaar numbers with incomplete information, which, along with the lack of proper documentation or poor quality biometrics, have resulted in multiple or duplicate Aadhaar cards being issued to the same person.”

It added: “We request the ECI to explain as to how it will ensure that duplicate and fake Aadhaars will not be linked to the EPICs and how fake and ghost voters will not be added to the electoral roll through this mechanism…. Therefore, at this stage, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) expresses its strong objection to the ECI’s proposal of linking EPICs with Aadhaar. We also urge the ECI to suspend the process of linking EPICs with Aadhaar until the concerns raised by AITC in this memorandum are addressed comprehensively.

“The process of seeding Aadhaar with voter details was meant to be completely voluntary. However, the ECI failed to disclose this in Form 6B used for seeding Aadhaar with voter details.

“… we request your clarification as to why no changes were made to Form 6B regarding seeding of Aadhaar with voter identities despite the undertaking given by the ECI to the Hon’ble Supreme Court on 18.09.2023.”

A senior EC official said there were no complaints from Bengal during the Special Summary Revision of the electoral roll that was published in January. “ECI is legally bound to suitably modify Form 6B of the Registration of Elector Rules 1960 in line with Orders of the Supreme Court and Section 23(4), 23(5) and 23(6) of the Representation of the People Act 1950.”