Party Demands Immediate Withdrawal of Exclusionary Decision
Ranchi:: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has strongly condemned the Union government’s move to make biometric authentication and Voter ID (EPIC) mandatory for accessing welfare benefits, describing it as another attack on the rural poor. The party has demanded the immediate withdrawal of the decision.
In a statement issued by its Polit Bureau, the CPI(M) said the announcement by Union Panchayati Raj Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh to replace Aadhaar with biometric authentication and Voter ID as the basis for welfare payments would further exclude vulnerable sections of society from essential government schemes.
The party pointed out that biometric authentication has repeatedly denied agricultural workers access to benefits under rural employment schemes. Elderly women workers often fail to receive their entitlements because machines cannot capture their iris scans, while manual labourers face exclusion due to worn-out fingerprints that cannot be matched by biometric systems. The requirement of smartphones for e-KYC has also created difficulties for rural households that do not possess such devices.
The CPI(M) recalled that the government had earlier assured the Supreme Court that Aadhaar would not be compulsory, but subsequently introduced it across various welfare schemes. The party questioned the government’s decision to now move away from Aadhaar after repeatedly portraying it as a foolproof system.
The statement also linked the move to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which the party described as a “surgical strike” on voting rights and a systematic exercise in mass disenfranchisement. It estimated that more than 13.4 crore voters had been excluded, with marginalised communities, Muslims, women and economically vulnerable sections disproportionately affected.
The party alleged that certain state governments were already denying ration and other welfare benefits to people on the pretext of their names being deleted from electoral rolls through SIR. It said such exclusion violated the principle that electoral roll deletion should not affect access to social welfare entitlements.
The CPI(M) warned that making Voter ID compulsory for welfare benefits would further restrict access to essential schemes and deprive a large section of the population of their rightful entitlements.
The party demanded that welfare benefits be delivered universally without imposing technological requirements or documentary conditions that the rural poor cannot fulfil.
Making Voter ID mandatory for accessing welfare schemes will make these programmes even more exclusionary. Several state governments are already denying ration and other welfare benefits to people on the pretext that their names have been deleted from electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). This is a clear violation of the Supreme Court's ruling that exclusion from electoral rolls cannot be used as a ground to deny people their entitlements under social welfare schemes.
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