New Delhi: Apart from manipulating electoral rolls and reining in bogus voters, the Central Government has taken a major step to check misuse of voter ID cards. In fact, the Union Cabinet has approved the Bill on Electoral Reforms. Sources said three major changes have been made in the bill related to electoral reforms. The bill is said to provide for linking of Voter ID card with Aadhaar card, though it will be made optional for the time being. Moreover, from next year, new voters will be given four chances in a year to add names to the voter list. Now, those who turn 18 on or before 1st January are allowed to register as voters.

According to reports, the Election Commission has been advocating a number of 'cut-off dates' to allow eligible people to register as voters. The Election Commission had told the government that due to the cut-off date of January 1, many youths were deprived of the electoral roll exercise. With only one cut-off date, people who completed the age of 18 years on January 2 were unable to register and had to wait for next year to register. On the other hand, the Ministry of Law and Justice had recently informed a Committee of Parliament that it proposes to amend Section 14B of the Representation of the People Act to include four cut-off dates for registration every year on 1st January, 1st April, 1st July and 1st October.

In March, the then Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha that the Election Commission has proposed to link the Aadhaar system with electoral rolls to curb the evil of registering the same person several times from different places. In addition, husbands of women working in security forces will be given voting rights through postal ballots.

Under the provisions of the present electoral law, the wife of any army man will be eligible to register as a military voter but the husband of a woman army man will not. However, the situation will change once the proposed Bill is approved by Parliament. The Election Commission is said to have asked the Law Ministry to change the terminology of 'wife' to 'spouse' in the provisions relating to military voters in the Representation of the People Act and the bill is likely to be introduced in the current winter session itself.

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