The CPI(M) on Wednesday condemned the Centre’s proposal to make voter ID and biometric authentication mandatory for welfare payments, saying it would further exclude the rural poor and compound the impact of deletions from electoral rolls during the ongoing SIR.
In a statement, the party’s politburo said the announcement by Union Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh to move away from Aadhaar-based identification for beneficiary payments would create fresh hurdles for people seeking access to Government welfare schemes.
The party cited instances of elderly women agricultural workers being denied benefits because biometric machines failed to capture their iris scans, while manual labourers faced authentication failures as their worn-out fingerprints could not be matched. It also said electronic KYC requirements involving smartphones posed difficulties for rural households that did not own such devices.
The CPI(M) said the proposed use of Electors’ Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers was particularly problematic amid the SIR exercise, which it described as an exercise in “mass disenfranchisement”.
Claiming that more than 13.4 crore voters had been excluded, the party alleged that marginalised communities, Muslims, women and economically vulnerable sections were disproportionately affected.
“Now, demanding Voter ID for welfare will make these schemes even more exclusive,” it said.
The party further alleged that some State Governments were denying ration and other benefits to people on the grounds that their names had been deleted during the SIR exercise, and said electoral roll exclusion could not be used to deny social welfare entitlements. It also questioned the Centre’s earlier position on Aadhaar, alleging that the Government had assured the Supreme Court that the document would not be compulsory but had subsequently extended its use across welfare schemes.
“Having touted Aadhaar as foolproof, the Government itself is discarding it,” the party said, demanding immediate withdrawal of the proposed change. Singh has said beneficiaries would have to provide biometric authentication along with their EPIC numbers for identification and payments.
The minister argued that Aadhaar was no longer a reliable basis for identifying beneficiaries, pointing to the widespread availability of enrolment facilities and saying the document could be obtained within minutes.
He did not specify the schemes that would be covered by the proposed arrangement.
The announcement has raised questions about its scope, as the Ministry of Panchayati Raj does not directly operate schemes involving payments to individual beneficiaries. Aadhaar is, however, used for beneficiary identification and payments under several other central Government programmes, including rural housing assistance, PM-KISAN and social security pensions.
The CPI(M) said welfare entitlements should be delivered universally and not made conditional on technology or documents that poor households may not be able to access.