The Election Commission has revived a proposal to link Aadhaar numbers with voter IDs, which was rejected in the past. Srinivas Kodali, a researcher and activist against the misuse of Aadhaar, says this should be rejected because it will “disenfranchise a lot people”.
Kodali has documented such cases, where lakhs of voters in Telangana found their names struck off the voters list after just such as an exercise.
In this podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia, Kodali points out many dangers of Aadhaar, and said the project has suffered from “lack of transparency right from the beginning”.
The private sector is pushing it and influencing government policies, because “Data is said to be the new oil.” He adds, “There was a lack of transparency about Aadhaar right from the beginning.”
Eventually, he said, the idea is to link all the databases; “Aadhaar is just the beginning.” This will mean loss of sovereignty of the people.
