Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher, has filed a complaint with the Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana alleging that the Election Commission has unlawfully shared photographs and names of voters from the electoral roll with the Government of Telangana. He alleges that officials have used this voter data to develop the Real Time Digital Authentication of Identity (RTDAI), an AI- and machine learning-based facial recognition system deployed across departments for services ranging from issuing pensioner life certificates to piloting e-voting in Hyderabad.
“This identification system has now become a general-purpose system that is being used by Telangana’s Department of Transport, Department of Education and for any other purpose as deemed necessary by the Telangana Government,” reads the complaint letter accessed by MediaNama.
Voter Data Sharing Allegations Against ECI
Citing a public document available (archive) on the Dr. Marri Chenna Reddy Human Resource Development Institute’s website, Kodali points to a 2015 instance when the Election Commission of India shared voter and EPIC data with the Telangana government’s Resident Data Hub during the National Electoral Roll Purification Authentication Programme (NERPAP) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
In March 2015, the Election Commission of India launched the NERPAP all over India to make electoral rolls “error-free” through authenticating the voters by linking Aadhaar IDs with voter cards. However, after five months of the NERPAP’s launch, the Supreme Court of India ordered to stop the programme. The SC ruled that the Aadhaar card cannot be mandatory for obtaining benefits, but can only be used for Public Distribution System (PDS) and LPG distribution, and it also mandated that the individual data collected by the UIDAI cannot be used for any other purposes except for criminal investigations when ordered by the courts.
“No Aadhaar data shall be collected from any other agency/data hub/organisation of Central Government/State Government, nor should the data collected so far be used for any authentication/other purpose.” – SC’s Order (2015)
Additionally, documents obtained through the Right to Information Act in 2019 revealed that the NERPAP drive to link Aadhaar IDs with voter cards disenfranchised more than 30 lakh voters in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, out of nearly 55 lakh disenfranchised voters in both states.
“Even after this systematic disenfranchisement caused by unknown government systems, your office [ECI] never addressed the issue of privacy violations that took place during NERP-AP, which are being continued by the Government of Telangana,” said Kodali in his complaint.
Why ECI Sharing Voter Data is Unconstitutional?
In his complaint, Srinivas Kodali points out an instance when the Telangana government officials piloted the Real Time Digital Authentication of Identity (RTDAI) system for voter identification at…
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