'Give Allegations The Seriousness It Deserves': Madras HC To ECI On Aadhar Misuse Case Against BJP

The petitioner alleges that the BJP has gained illegal access to the Aadhar data of Puducherry residents and fraudulently using it for stockpiling the votes.

Madras High Court | File Image

Ahead of assembly elections, public interest litigation was filed against Puducherry Bharatiya Janata alleging that the party has used the personal information in Aadhar card for its election campaigns. The litigation was filed by A Anand, the state committee president of the Democratic youth federation of India.

The petitioner alleges that the BJP has gained illegal access to the Aadhar data of Puducherry residents and fraudulently using it for stockpiling the votes. Conspicuously, Anand and other residents of Puducherry received an invitation to join the WhatsApp groups created by BJP booth members for electoral purposes.

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It is mentioned that such invitations were received only on the mobile numbers which were linked to Aadhar card while the other mobile numbers didn’t receive such notifications.

“From the voter ID to the electoral roll, as none of the identifiers provided by the ECI have our telephone numbers, it is startling to imagine how the party has gathered to that information and Aadhar could be their only source of amassing”, says the petitioner.  

Referring to this as a violation of the model of conduct the plea demanded a special investigation team headed by the court to look into the probe.

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Urging an immediate investigation into this issue the two-member panel of madras HC headed by Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee said, “It will not do for the election commission to pass the buck in this case and say that the cybercrime division is conducting an investigation. When the election commission is up and about in all other matters and asserts its primacy and authority, it has to look into this allegation immediately and with the degree of seriousness it deserves”

It should be noted that the largest breach of Aadhar data was reported in January 2018 where the offenders sold the data at the rate of INR 500 for 10 minutes, threatening the information security of 110 crore citizens.