By PTI
NEW DELHI: Parliament passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, on Tuesday with Rajya Sabha approving it through voice vote amid a walkout by the Opposition.
The Bill seeks to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem to weed out duplication of voters and weed out fake votes. It was passed by Lok Sabha on Monday.
The opposition parties were demanding a division of votes as they had moved a motion to send the Bill to a select committee, which was rejected by voice vote.
Members of opposition parties like Congress, TMC, Left parties, DMK and NCP staged a walkout from the House in protest.
Rajya Sabha approved the Bill after members of BJP, JD(U), YSRCP, AIADMK, BJD and TMC-M supported it, saying it will help in eradicating duplicate and fake votes from the electoral rolls.
Besides linking electoral roll to Aadhaar, the bill also seeks to make the statutes gender neutral by substituting the term ‘wife’ with ‘spouse’ to allow husbands of service voters to cast their vote from the place where their wives are posted.
It also seeks to provide four qualifying dates — January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 — in a year for registration of voters, instead of a single qualifying date — January 1.
