No such category as ‘suspicious voters’ under law, poll body tells Rajya Sabha

The Election Commission on Thursday clarified that there is no category of “suspicious voters” under the 1951 Representation of the People Act.

The poll panel’s statement was conveyed to the Rajya Sabha through a written reply by Minister of State for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal amid the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.

Meghwal was responding to a question from Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman, who sought to know whether such voters had participated in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The clarification comes even as the poll body is reviewing voter rolls in Bihar, with one of the reasons it had cited being the alleged inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants over time.

In response to a separate question from Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha, Meghwal also said that the process of linking Aadhaar cards with the Election Photo Identity Cards has not yet begun.

He added that following a 2021 amendment to the Representation of the People Act, the poll body began collecting Aadhaar details from voters on a voluntary basis starting August 1, 2022.

The clarification comes four months after the Election Commission announced plans to start the process to link voter ID cards with the Aadhaar database.

In a press note on March 18, the electoral body had said that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar...

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