India: Rushing Through The Bills And A Clueless Opposition!
Why oppose this
inevitable move as it traces back to 2013 and only thanks to the verdicts of
the Supreme Court of India in the past few years responding to pleas against
the moves, the linking could be accomplished only partially till now? The Election
Commission of India (ECI), a supposedly independent constitutional authority,
has been asking for this reform since long time in a bid to eliminate bogus
voting and duplication of voter cards. The Government justifies this move by standing
with the ECI and adding to it that the said linking is still ‘voluntary’; that
it proposes to be ‘gender neutral’ changing ‘wife’ to ‘spouse’ that will allow
both husbands and wives in service vote from the same location; that the voters
can register for voter cards four times in a year now instead of just once so
far; and that not providing the Aadhaar Card does not necessarily mean that the
applications will be rejected.
The opposition
political parties and some other stakeholders are saying that this is a ‘dangerous’
move leading to deletion of the names of many voters the likes of which had
been seen after the ECI decided upon the linking in 2015, enrolling more than
300 million citizens already; that the Government is set to resort to ‘target’ the
voters having the profiles of the citizens thus stored in the ECI data base in
view of the forthcoming assembly elections in five states; that the fraudsters
can have a very good time thanks to possible exploitation of the same data base;
and most importantly that the country still not having a Privacy and Data Protection
Law in place this might lead to breaches and leaks of personal data. The last
point carries a lot of weight, and ideally, the Government should’ve first ‘rushed
through’ the Privacy and Data Protection Bill, and then could’ve made the elections
reforms bill fool-proof.
However, leaks and
breaches in the personal data bases have been taking place all over the globe from
various sources quite frequently in these digital days—the banks to the social
media—and fraudsters have been in the act of resorting to various ‘creative’
measures to cheat people. While as per the Supreme Court orders that submission
of Aadhaar Cards cannot be demanded by private entities, the banks, public or
private, and the telecom companies have been making the card mandatory for accounts,
credit cards, SIM cards, address proof or for change of address and so on. Besides,
the linking of the Aadhaar Card to the PAN card has been made mandatory for
Income Tax purpose. Of course, the Supreme Court has given some relaxations to
some of the above and more for the purpose of digital payment gateways; but the
distinction between ‘voluntary’ and ‘mandatory’ disclosures of Aadhaar Card
details through the biometrics often gets blurred. We would say there is
actually nothing wrong in going for the Card by all the citizens of the country
and thus release the outlets for a range of benefits and conveniences.
Politics has always
been the mainstay in a democracy like India, and the ‘brute majority’ enjoyed
by the ruling party has been the real concern for the largely disjointed opposition
political alliances. Now, all the opposition parties are alarmed about the
possible benefits through this ‘linking’ law for the ruling party in the forthcoming
assembly elections rather than the justifiability of the ‘linking’. As far as
we the citizens are concerned both the ruling party and the opposition must
focus on the real issues of concern rather than indulging in petty and
electoral politics.
In the midst of
repeated disruptions in the winter session of the Parliament over issues, prominently
on a union minister and his on being involved in the Lakhimpur-Kheri incident in
Uttar Pradesh where at least four farmers were mowed down by the son’s vehicle,
another bill, the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill has been presented
in Lok Sabha today, aiming at making the marriageable age uniform for both men
and women, again leading to opposition protests. The proposed bill wants to
raise the marriageable age for girls from 18 to 21 which makes it uniform with
the boys. Some of the opposition political parties are protesting against the
move saying that at the age of 18 one becomes an adult, eligible to vote also,
and therefore, the girls attaining the age of 18 should have the right to
decide about their future in choosing to get married if preferred. Such was the
ruckus in the lower house that finally the bill had to be referred to a
Parliamentary Panel for scrutiny, and with just two days left for the winter
session it may not be possible for the ruling party to ‘rush through’ again.
.jpeg)
Comments