Electoral Reform Bill, 2018

The Electoral Reform Bill, 2018 was a legislative proposal introduced in the Lok Sabha on 30 December 2018 with the explicit aim of overhauling India’s electoral architecture. By seeking to fuse the nation’s biometric identity system, Aadhaar, with the voter‑registration database, the bill promised a single, immutable voter‑ID card and a suite of procedural upgrades that would reshape how elections are conducted, counted and monitored. Its ambition lay not merely in administrative tidying but in confronting entrenched challenges—duplicate entries, voter‑fraud allegations, and the logistical strain of a 900‑million‑strong electorate. ## Origins / Historical Background The bill emerged against a backdrop of successive amendments to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, which had struggled to keep pace with the scale of India’s democratic exercise. The 2009‑2014 period saw the Election Commission of India (ECI) introduce Voter‑Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT) on a pilot basis, while the Supreme Court’s 2018 judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India affirmed Aadhaar’s constitutional validity but cautioned against its indiscriminate use. The convergence of these legal and technological milestones created a policy window that the Ministry of Law and Justice, led by Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, sought to exploit through the 2018 Bill. ## Key Provisions - Aadhaar‑Voter‑ID linkage (Sec. 2, RPA 1951 amendment): Mandates that every voter’s entry be cross‑checked against the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) database, rendering duplicate or fictitious enrolments invalid. - Single Voter Identification Card (Sec. 3, RPA 1951 amendment): Replaces the separate Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and Aadhaar card with a unified document bearing both biometric and photographic data. - Universal VVPAT deployment (Sec. 4, RPA 1951 amendment): Extends the paper‑audit‑trail requirement to all elections—parliamentary, state assembly, and local bodies—ensuring that every electronic vote is verifiable on the spot. - Expansion of polling stations (Sec. 5, RPA 1951 amendment): Sets a target of 2 million polling stations by 2022, limiting the distance between a voter’s residence and the nearest booth to 2 km in rural areas and 1 km in urban zones. - National Election Authority (Sec. 6, new provision): Proposes an autonomous body under the ECI’s aegis to oversee the implementation of biometric linkage, VVPAT integrity, and the digital transmission of results. Collectively, these provisions would have amended 12 sections of the Representation of the People Act and introduced three new sections to the Conduct of Election Rules. ## How It Works / Mechanism Upon enrolment, a citizen’s Aadhaar number would be captured alongside traditional electoral details—name, age, address, and constituency. The UIDAI’s authentication API would then verify the biometric match in real time, flagging any discrepancies for manual review by the Chief Electoral Officer of the state. Once validated, the system would generate a QR‑coded voter‑ID card that stores both the Aadhaar number and a unique electoral serial. At the polling station, the voter would present this card; a handheld scanner would confirm the QR code, while a fingerprint or iris scan would provide a second layer of verification before the EVM records the vote. Simultaneously, the VVPAT printer would produce a paper slip visible to the voter, which would be stored for post‑poll audits in a ratio of one slip per 1,000 votes, as stipulated by the Bill. ## Current Status / Implementation The Electoral Reform Bill, 2018 was introduced but never passed the Lok Sabha before the dissolution of the 16th Parliament in May 2019. Consequently, it lapsed and was not re‑introduced in the 17th Lok Sabha. While the ECI has continued to expand VVPAT usage—reaching 100 % coverage for Lok Sabha elections in 2019—the Aadhaar‑voter‑ID linkage remains optional, governed by the Election Commission’s 2020 guidelines that permit but do not mandate biometric verification. The proposed National Election Authority has not been constituted, and the target of 2 million polling stations is being pursued through separate budgetary allocations rather than statutory mandate. ## Significance Linking Aadhaar to voter rolls promised a decisive blow to “ghost voters” and the inflation of electoral rolls, a concern highlighted in the 2017‑18 Election Commission audit that identified over 3 million duplicate entries nationwide. By embedding biometric checks at the point of voting, the Bill aimed to elevate public