60% of India’s voters linked Aadhaar to voter ID: RTI

Central idea: An RTI query has revealed that around 60% of Indian voters have linked their Aadhaar cards with their voter ID cards.

Benefits of Aadhaar linking

• Voter uniqueness: The move to link Aadhaar and voter ID cards was introduced to prevent electoral fraud and ensure unique identity of each voter.
• Curb bogus votes: It is expected to help prevent multiple voting, impersonation, and bogus voting, which have been a concern in the past.
• Facilitate migrant voting: There have been migrant workers who may have been registered more than once on the electoral rolls in different constituencies or for persons registered multiple times within the same constituency.

Is the linking of Aadhaar with one’s Voter ID mandatory?

• In December 2021, Parliament passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 .
• It states that the electoral registration officer may require voters to furnish their Aadhaar numbers to verify Authencity of voters list.
• This was to amend the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and Section 23(4) was inserted in the RP Act.

Why was such linking proposed?

The preference to use Aadhaar for verification and authentication, both by the state and private sector, stems from few reasons:

• Increase in UID-holders: First, at the end of 2021, 99.7% of the adult Indian population had an Aadhaar card.
• Most versatile document: This coverage exceeds that of any other officially valid document such as driver’s licence, ration cards, PAN cards etc. that are mostly applied for specific purposes.
• Reliable source of authentication: Since Aadhaar allows for biometric authentication, Aadhaar based authentication and verification is considered more reliable, quicker and cost efficient when compared to other IDs.

Issues with mandatory linking: Puttaswamy judgment highlights

• Puttaswamy judgment: The above reasons do not suffice the mandating of Aadhaar except in limited circumstances as per the Puttaswamy judgment.
• The indispensability of the purpose: It needs to be considered whether such mandatory linkage of Aadhaar with Voter ID would pass the test of being “necessary and proportionate” to the purpose of de-duplication which is sought to be achieved.
• Constitutional ambiguity: In Puttaswamy, one of the questions that the Supreme Court explored was whether the mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts was constitutional or not.
• Against informational autonomy: It is the right to privacy which would allow a person to decide which official document they want to use for verification and authentication.

Other judicial observations: Lal Babu Hussein (1995) Case

• The Supreme Court had held that the Right to vote cannot be disallowed by insisting only on four proofs of identity.
• The voters are entitled to rely on any other proof of identity and obtain the right to vote.

What are the operational difficulties?

• Aadhaar is not a citizenship proof: The preference to Aadhaar for the purposes of determining voters is puzzling as Aadhaar is only a proof of residence and not a proof of citizenship.
• Excluding non-citizens is not easy: Verifying voter identity against this will only help in tackling duplication but will not remove voters who are not citizens of India from the electoral rolls.
• Estimate of error rates in biometric based authentication: This certainly differs. As per the UIDAI in 2018, Aadhaar based biometric authentication had a 12% error rate.
• Disenfranchisement of existing voters: Errors have led to the disenfranchisement of around 30 lakh voters in AP and Telangana before the Supreme Court stalled the process of linkage.

Key concern: Right to Privacy

• Some civil societies has highlighted that linking of the two databases of electoral rolls and Aadhaar could lead to the linkage of Aadhaar’s “demographic” information with voter ID information.
• This could lead to violation of the right to privacy and surveillance measures by the state.
• This would leave the EC with the option of verifying its information only through door-to-door checks.
• There is a lack of enforceable data protection principles that regulate how authentication data will be used.

Way Forward

• Address privacy and security concerns: There should be strict measures in place to ensure the safety of personal information and prevent data breaches.
• Provide alternative authentication: The government should provide alternative methods of identity verification. This will help ensure that no citizen is disenfranchised due to the lack of an Aadhaar card.
• Regular monitoring and evaluation: The government should regularly monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the linking of Aadhaar and voter ID cards in preventing electoral fraud.

 ‘Neutral citation’ system in SC judgment

Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud announced that the Supreme Court will adopt a “neutral citation system” for its judgments. The CJI expressed hope that High Courts too would follow neutral citations for their judgments. The Delhi, Kerala, and Madras HCs have already introduced neutral citation.

What is a “citation”?

1. A case citation is essentially an identification tag for a judgment.
2. Typically, it would contain a reference number, the year of the judgment, the name of the court that delivered that judgment, and shorthand for the journal publishing the judgment.

What is a neutral citation?

1. A neutral citation would mean that the court would assign its own citation — distinct from those given by traditional Law Reporters.
2. Law Reporters are periodicals or annual digests that publish judgments, often with an editorial note to make it accessible for lawyers to refer to precedents.
3. For example, for the landmark Kesavananda Bharati case, the citation in ‘Supreme Court Cases’, a journal published by the Eastern Book Company, is (1973) 4 SCC 225. In the All India Reporter (AIR), the citation is AIR 1973 SC 1461.

Why is a neutral system good or necessary?

1. Judgments mention citations while referring to precedents and often use citations from different Law Reporters. With artificial intelligence (AI) enabled translation of judgments and transcribing of court proceedings, a uniform citation is necessary.
2. Several High Courts including Delhi High Court have started a neutral citation format.
3. The Delhi HC neutral citation is, for example, in this format: No-YEAR/DHC/XXXXXX

How will the SC implement the neutral citation system?

1. Our recent initiative is neutral citations for all judgments of the Supreme Court so all 30,000 judgments are going to have neutral citations.
2. First tranche will be till 1 January 2023, then the other tranche will be till judgments from 2014 and then finally we will go back to 1950. So all judgments will now have neutral citations, the CJI said.

FBU under scrutiny for ‘political espionage’

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has given the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) its nod to prosecute Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in a prevention of corruption case related to a ‘Feed Back Unit’ (FBU) created in 2015. The CBI had sought sanction to prosecute Sisodia, who presides over the Delhi government’s vigilance department.

What is the Feed Back Unit; is it still operational?

1. Setup in September 2015 with approval from Delhi Cabinet of Ministers, the ‘Feed Back Unit’ was tasked with gathering ‘relevant information and actionable feedback’ regarding the working of government departments, autonomous bodies, institutions and entities under the jurisdiction of the Delhi government.
2. Its mandate also included conducting sting operations, or ‘trap cases’, by its personnel, dubbed intelligence ‘assets’, on ‘targets’ or subjects – mainly individuals – under the Secretary of the Vigilance department but the ‘direct control of the Chief Minister’s Office.’
3. In a note to the Delhi Chief Secretary, Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena termed it “an extra-constitutional/extra-judicial body” on lines of a private intelligence agency, answering to none but a single individual.
4. The unit became functional and began incurring expenditure for ‘operations’ since February 2016.
5. A provision of Rs. 1 crore was set aside for ‘Secret Service Expenditure’ for the unit in the Delhi government’s budget for the Financial Year 2016-17. There is no clarity on whether the unit is still functional.

What was the organizational set-up of the FBU?

1. Under the charge of the Secretary of the Delhi government’s vigilance department, the FBU is supposed to have been under the ‘direct control of the Chief Minister’s Office’ through individuals appointed as advisors to the Chief Minister.
2. It is understood to have become operational with 17 contractual employees, most of whom were retired officials from the Intelligence Bureau, Central Paramilitary Forces and police organisations. The posts being created for the unit were initially proposed to be manned by serving as well as retired personnel.
3. Initially, 20 posts under the FBU were to be adjusted against 22 abolished posts of the Delhi government’s Industries Department but 20 of these posts in the FBU were adjusted against 88 posts created in the Anti-Corruption Branch allegedly without the consent of the Lieutenant Governor’s Secretariat.
4. The unit also had a 6-vehicle contingent under it, including SUVs and 3 motorcycles along with supporting staff in the form of 4 Data Entry Operators.

 Sansad Ratna Awards

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated fellow Members of Parliament who will be conferred the Sansad Ratna Awards 2023. The Sansad Ratna Awards were instituted in 2010, inspired by the teachings of former President APJ Abdul Kalam, who launched the first edition of the Award function in Chennai. They seek to recognise and felicitate the top-performing MPs on the basis of their work in the apex legislative body. So far, 90 Parliamentarians have been given this award. The 13th edition of the award ceremony is set to be held this year on 25 March 2023 in New Delhi.

Who are the Sansad Awards winners this year?

1. The Jury Committee has chosen a total of 13 MPs and two parliamentary committees for the award, with a lifetime award being presented for the first time this year.
2. The awardees are Bidyut Baran Mahato (BJP, Jharkhand), Sukanta Majumdar (BJP, West Bengal), Kuldeep Rai Sharma (INC, Andaman Nicobar Islands), Heena Vijayakumar Gavit (BJP, Maharashtra), Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (INC, West Bengal), Gopal Chinayya Shetty (BJP, Maharashtra), Sudhir Gupta (BJP, Madhya Pradesh), and Amol Ramsing Kolhe (NCP, Maharashtra) from the Lok Sabha.
3. From the Rajya Sabha, John Brittas (CPI-M, Kerala), Manoj Kumar Jha (RJD, Bihar), Fauzia Tahseen Ahmed Khan (NCP, Maharashtra), Vishambhar Prasad Nishad (Samajwadi Party, UP) and Chhaya Verma (INC, Chhattisgarh) will be given the Sansad Ratna award.
4. The Finance Committee (Lok Sabha, under BJP’s Jayant Sinha) and Transport, Tourism and Culture Committee (Rajya Sabha, under YSR Congress’s V Vijayasai Reddy) have been nominated for Awards for their outstanding cumulative performance from the beginning of the 17th Lok Sabha until the end of Winter Session of 2022.
5. T K Rangarajan (former Rajya Sabha MP for two terms and a Senior CPIM Leader) will be honoured with the “Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Lifetime Achievement Award” for his contribution to “Parliament and Indian people” over the years.

Which is the organisation that instituted the Sansad Ratna Awards?

1. The Sansad Ratna Awards are not given by the Government of India, though over the years, its jury members have included individuals in the government.
2. The awards were instead the brainchild of K Srinivasan, a communication strategist who founded the Prime Point Foundation in 1999.
3. Started to “promote communication awareness”, it is this foundation which runs the awards show, alongside the foundation’s monthly eMagazine PreSense.
4. The awards were started with support from IIT Madras.

Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) and International Labour Organization (ILO)

 Recently, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India , has been selected as External Auditor of the International Labour Organization in Geneva for a four-year term from 2024 to 2027.

About CAG:

• CAG is an independent authority under the Constitution of India.
• The Constitution of India provides for an independent office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in chapter V under Part V.
• He is the head of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department.
• He is the guardian of the public purse.
• He acts as a guide, friend and philosopher of the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament.
• Incumbent CAG of India: Shri Girish Chandra Murmu.

Constitutional Provisions regarding the CAG:

• Article 148–151 , in  Part V of the constitution of India deals with the appointment, oath and conditions of service ,Duties and Powers of CAG.
• Article 279 – The calculation of “net proceeds” is ascertained and certified by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, whose certificate is final.
• Third Schedule – Section IV of the Third Schedule of the Constitution of India prescribes the form of oath or affirmation to be made by the Judges of the Supreme Court and the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India at the time of assumption of office.
• Sixth Schedule– According to this schedule, the District Council or Regional Council should be kept in such form as the CAG prescribes with the approval of the President.
• In addition, these bodies’ accounts are audited in such manner as CAG may think fit, and the reports relating to such accounts shall be submitted to the Governor who shall cause them to be laid before the Council.

About International Labour Organization (ILO):

• It was established by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
• It is the only tripartiteN. agency. It brings together governments, employers and workers.
• Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.
• It receivedthe Nobel Peace Prize in 1969
• The eight-core conventions of the ILO are:
  • Forced Labour Convention (No. 29)
  • Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No.105)
  • Equal Remuneration Convention (No.100)
  • Discrimination (Employment Occupation) Convention (No.111)
  • Minimum Age Convention (No.138)
  • Worst forms of Child Labour Convention (No.182)
  • Freedom of Association and Protection of Right to Organised Convention (No.87)
  • Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention (No.98)
• India is afounding member of the ILO
• India has ratified six out of the eight-core/fundamental ILO conventions. These conventions are:
• Forced Labour Convention (No. 29)
• Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No.105)
• Equal Remuneration Convention (No.100)
• Discrimination (Employment Occupation) Convention (No.111)
• Minimum Age Convention (No.138)
• Worst forms of Child Labour Convention (No.182)

Key reports by ILO :

• World Employment and Social Outlook.
• Global Wage Report.