How Aadhaar can usher the biggest political reform in India !!

Aadhaar is arguably one of the best government schemes that have been implemented in India in recent times. It is poised to bring revolution in a lot of sectors in India. One such area, which has unfortunately not been discussed at all, is reforming the Indian electoral process. In this blog, I will try to highlight how easily Aadhaar can be used to usher the biggest political reform in India. Hope someone important in Election Commission reads this post.

One big difference between Indian constitution and any other constitution in the world is that the Indian constitution mentions in great detail about the election process and the powers of Election Commission (EC). Rather than leaving the election implementation details to laws made by the government of the day, the founding fathers decided to explicitly keep them in the constitution. This was one of the major reasons why India remained a democracy even though almost all other countries, that gained independence after World War-2, quickly succumbed to dictatorship or civil wars. India did not have to depend on political incumbents to implement electoral reforms, which adversely impact political incumbents the most. Key electoral reforms in the past, such as photo-based voter id cards, electronic voting machines etc., were spearheaded by EC, despite strong opposition by political parties. Any realistic plan for electoral reforms in India should be implementable by EC, with minimal or no support from the government.

There is no doubt that India is a thriving democracy and we have relatively free-and-fair elections, as compared to other democracies in the world. Due to the efforts of EC over multiple decades, the era of ballot stuffing, booth captures and fully rigged elections (such as 1987 Kashmir elections) are now over. However, there is still much to be desired in our current election process. Some of the major problems include - high cost of conducting elections, missing names in voter lists, multiple entries of the same person in different (or same) booths, fake names in voter lists, names of deceased people in voter lists, difficulty in finding the booth in which a person has to go for voting, enabling voting for people who cannot go to the booth for some genuine reason (E.g. soldiers, migrant workers etc.), low voter turnout especially among well-educated class etc.

Before I start on why integrating Aadhaar with voter id cards & electoral rolls is such a great idea, let me quickly go through the basic features of Aadhaar. Aadhaar is the only database which guarantees almost zero duplication and has 99% coverage of all Indian adults (1.08 crore people). Unlike a bank card or a chip-based driving license card or PAN card, the Aadhaar card can be easily printed at any Aadhaar center. There is no logistics required to transfer the card from a central printing location into the hands of the citizen. It allows instant identification of any Indian, through biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or iris scan. All other fields in Aadhaar database (such as name, address, mobile number, email id, photo etc) can be incorrect, but the biometric data to Aadhaar number mapping is 100% accurate. Moreover, the Aadhaar based India Stack APIs have proven their reliability, scalability, performance and efficiency for both authentication and fund transfer purposes.

In 1993, EC introduced photo-based voter id cards called EPIC (Electors Photo Identity Cards) and it took more than 11 long years for it to become compulsory for electoral voting (there are still some very limited exceptions allowed). EPIC was a major step in reducing electoral frauds. It is now time to link EPIC cards with citizen's biometric information to make it even more secure and error proof. The good news is that because of existing Aadhaar's biometric database, it would take less than 2-3 years and only 1 general election to completely shift to bio-metric based voter id card and electoral rolls. I will call the new voter id card as Biometric Electors Photo Identity Card or BEPIC going forward.

Challenges in linking Aadhaar with EPIC

1. Aadhaar is legally not compulsory for Indians, except for getting certain monetary benefits from the government. No one can be denied the new biometric voter id cards because
• He/she does not have Aadhaar card or 
• He/she does not want to link his Aadhaar with EPIC. 
2. Aadhaar is not an official proof of being an Indian citizen and so a citizen cannot demand BEPIC based on just Aadhaar (it requires some address proof). Many illegal immigrants, especially from Bangladesh, have an Aadhaar card but no EPIC or presence in the electoral rolls. 
3. The minimum age for voting is 18 years. However, Aadhaar card has no age restriction and there is no sanity of the age (date of birth) in the Aadhaar database.
4. Secret Ballot is fundamental to democracy and no IT system can be allowed to store the vote(s) cast by any individual. The current EVMs only store the total votes cast for each candidate and not individual votes. 
5. The time required to cast a single vote in a polling booth cannot be increased, else it would lead to complete chaos of elections which need to be conducted in a single day only.

Proposed Solution

Given the privacy concerns that are increasingly going to be associated with Aadhaar in future, it is important that new bio-metric based voter-id database of EC is not an add-on to the Aadhaar database (or any direct integration), but rather a completely separate database. This database must maintain its own copy of the biometric information for each Indian citizen, along with Aadhaar number (optional) and all other fields that the current voter-id database maintains.

If the Aadhaar number is voluntarily provided by the citizen, then the biometric information saved on both the databases must be the same (i.e. or easily matched by a standard algorithm). Currently, Aadhaar does not provide any mechanism for transfer of biometric information to any other database and this need to be custom built specially for the EC. This is where the biggest legal and implementation challenge lies, as this cannot be done by EC alone. This requires government approval and active participation.

If the Aadhaar number is not provided by the citizen, then Election commission need to take the bio-metric details of the resident themselves and classify citizens into the following two types -

1. Indian having Aadhaar but new biometric voter id card is not linked with Aadhaar: 
   Biometric information of the citizen matches exactly with a particular resident in Aadhaar database. The same biometric data must be stored in both databases which can be matched by a standard algorithm.
2. Indian not having Aadhaar but having new biometric voter id cards: 
   Biometric information of the citizen does not match any of the existing residents in the Aadhaar database. The biometric information must be saved in such a format that in future if his/her Aadhaar number is issued, the biometric information between the two databases can be matched.

Similar to the Aadhaar card, the EC centers should be able to easily print and give out BEPIC in real time without any logistics required to track the transfer of card from a central printing location into the hands of every citizen. Similar to Aadhaar, a citizen can have any many copies of his/her BEPIC card as he/she wants.

The link between Aadhaar database and BEPIC database can also be severed in future after enough elector coverage has been reached, if required for privacy or control concerns. There are pros and cons for both cases - having a permanent link between Aadhaar and BEPIC or having a temporary link in the initial phase only. I will not go into that much details in this blog.

EC will also have to replicate the relevant portion of the Aadhaar system which enables instant citizen verification anytime using his/her biometric information (fingerprint or iris scan). Of course, since this system will only be used by EC and no other third party/organization, it can be at a much lower scale/capacity than Aadhaar system. This instant biometric verification system needs to be enabled at each polling booth. This will reduce the manual dependency to verify address and streamline multiple EC processes.

A single system of electoral rolls based on BEPIC needs to be developed for all types of elections - central, state, municipal or panchayat elections. I will call the new electoral rolls as BEPIC electoral rolls subsequently. The main aim of BEPIC electoral rolls will be to ensure that the same BEPIC does not have different addresses in different electoral rolls (including municipal and panchayat electoral rolls). Change of address, at any EC center, by a citizen before any type of election, must be reflected in all electoral rolls for all subsequent elections as well.

Operations & Change Management

• Online linking of Aadhaar number to EPIC number
  Similar to the various forms that exist on National Voters Services Portal such as Form 6, 7, 8, 8A etc, a new form should be created which allows residents to voluntarily link their Aadhaar number with their EPIC number after uploading relevant documents and manual back-end verification. Once this is done, the citizens must be asked to collect their new BEPIC from designated centers. The website http://electoralsearch.in/ used to have a link for linking Aadhaar number with EPIC number but that was discontinued later due to unknown reasons.
• Issue BEPIC at Polling booth stations before elections
  Every year the election commission asks citizens to come to polling booth centers to verify that their names are in electoral rolls and to invite claims and objections for inclusion, deletion, modification & transposition. The Election Commission should enable these EC centers to necessarily have biometric devices similar to Aadhaar centers. All the above processes need to be changed to incorporate the instant biometric verification functionality that is now available with EC.
  Citizens can link their Aadhaar number with EPIC using standard e-sign functionality and instantly get their BEPIC card (without the need for a second visit). If citizens don't want to link their Aadhaar or do not have Aadhaar, then they can give their biometric data at these centers. BEPIC cards can be collected from these centers after 15-20 days or can be simply printed online
• Preparing new BEPIC electoral rolls before elections
  Currently, electoral rolls for each polling booth is divided into various Part numbers with a serial number assigned to each EPIC (each voter). Electoral rolls are refined before each election (state or central election) to remove wrong entries, update address changes of residents, remove deceased residents etc.  Each entry in electoral roll must be classified into the following categories
• EPIC only
• Aadhaar link request pending
• Biometric taken - BEPIC request pending
• BEPIC approved 
• BEPIC issued
• Giving BEPIC card during elections
  Each polling booth should pre-print BEPIC for all citizens for whom BEPIC has been approved but cards were not issued. On election day they must be given their BEPIC before casting their votes. Even voters who were issued BEPIC card but did not bring their BEPIC card must be given a new copy before casting their vote.
• Change in the voting process during elections
  BEPIC cannot be made compulsory in the first election after its launch. However, biometric details (or Aadhaar e-sign) can be taken for all non-BEPIC voters, after they have cast their votes, so that in the next election BEPIC can be made compulsory. The important thing is that taking biometric details for creating BEPIC can be outsourced to agencies, similar to how Aadhaar details are currently being taken. All voters are asked to carry some ID proof when they come to cast their votes. If Aadhaar card as an ID proof is presented as the most preferable option by EC messaging, the queues in polling booth can be made much shorter.

Benefits of linking Aadhaar with EPIC

1. Aadhaar has already done the heavy lifting of checking each person's biometric identifier with everyone else to determine that it is the unique one and reject duplicates. The costly and time-consuming step will not have to be done by EC for all those cases where citizens themselves volunteer to link their Aadhaar number.
2. BEPIC will lead to near zero election fraud (missing/duplicate/wrong entries in electoral rolls) in Indian elections. By leveraging Aadhaar, Indian elections can have lower election frauds than any developed country in the world.
3. Providing a valid address proof is very difficult for certain sections of the society such as homeless people, migrant workers, flood/earthquake victims etc. Biometric based instant verification devices at each EC center, connected to a central database, can be easily used to remove the need for any other address proof.
4. Currently transferring the address mapped on your voter-id (and electoral rolls) from one state/city to another takes a very long time as it requires paperwork at both ends. This leads to effective disenfranchisement of a large section of the society. The proposed solution will enable single visit, at-the-counter instant transfer of address in BEPIC and change in the designated polling booth for any citizen.
5. Suppose a person goes to the wrong polling booth during an election, he can be easily redirected to the correct polling booth. It is technically possible to even create solutions where a person can go to any polling booth to cast his/her vote. Similarly, it is also possible to create a system for early voting (similar to USA) or online voting or removing the need for indelible ink. However, these are not advisable in Indian context at present.
6. Due to a focused effort by EC, the electoral rolls for central and state elections have few errors. However, electoral rolls for local municipal & panchayat elections are extremely flawed. Local elections in most places in India cannot be called free and fair. The BEPIC electoral rolls system will clean up the electoral rolls of municipal/panchayat elections as well. 
7. Conducting elections is very expensive for a developing country with a huge population such as India. A very large percentage of the cost is because of manual efforts to maintain multiple electoral rolls, continuously conduct data correction exercises before each election etc. BEPIC will result in a one-time high capital expenditure but will reduce the operating expenditure substantially.
8. Mature democracies around the world are moving towards participatory democracy from representative democracy. Going forward there will be far more referendums and other forms of direct public participation in shaping policy. BEPIC will make India future ready for participatory democracy.

I have long believed that the solution to most of the Indian problems is technology. Technology will help us leapfrog several challenges that other developed countries took decades to solve. This step alone will not usher India into an era of clean politics but will go a long way in institutionalizing free and fair elections and deepening the roots of democracy in this country. Given the pace at which new applications are being built on top of Aadhaar, I am very confident that some variation of what I have described above, will be implemented by EC in the next 5-7 years. It will be very interesting to find out how accurately I was able to predict the future !!