Sitaram Yechury's Letter to ECI on Voter ID-Aadhaar Linking https://www.cpim.org/pressbriefs/sitaram-yechurys-letter-eci-voter-id-aadhaar-linking August 5, 2022
in 2015..several Chief Electoral Officers across the country linked Aadhaar with Voter ID of 31 crore voters without informing the individual voters and instead using algorithms to automatically link them based on already existing data. This process has resulted in voter deletions across the country and in particular in the state of Telangana, where the NERP-AP exercise of Aadhaar with Voter ID was originally developed. ..With all these previous electoral mis-practices with regard to Aadhaar, the lack of consultations with political parties before the start of this process is concerning. India currently does not have a data protection or privacy law and neither does the Election Commission of India have a privacy policy with regards to maintenance of Aadhaar data of voters...The lack of data security, voter deletions and subjecting the data with the election commission data to various state surveillance databases is violative of the Representation of People’s Act. It is the duty of the Election Commission of India to investigate these serious lapses in voter deletions and data breaches that occurred. ..
Comment in WhatsApp by VC:
I don't see where he has recognised the overarching Constitutional right to privacy in the document. ..To my mind, the repeated public reference to the lack of data protection laws only helps to throw smoke over the real problem, which is the disgraceful failure of both public institutions, the courts and the political frameworks, of which his Party is representative, to prosecute and penalise the State's intrusion into the dignity of the people whom these institutions are supposed to serve, not to rule.