New Delhi: Amid the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in poll-bound Bihar, the Election Commission (EC) has informed parliament that there is no such category as “suspicious voters” under law. This comes as the poll body, in announcing the exercise in Bihar on June 24, had said that it had been necessitated due to various reasons, among which was the inclusion of “foreign illegal immigrants” in the electoral roll.On Thursday (July 31), Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman asked in the Rajya Sabha whether it is a fact that in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, suspicious voters had cast their votes.“The Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed that there is no category of suspicious voters as per the Representation of People Act, 1951,” MoS law and justice Arjun Ram Meghwal said in his written response.While announcing the Bihar SIR, which has raised questions of mass exclusions and disenfranchisement, the EC on June 24 had cited foreign illegal immigrants as one the reasons for conducting the exercise.“Various reasons such as rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants have necessitated the conduct of an intensive revision so as to ensure integrity and preparation of error-free electoral rolls,” the Election Commission’s June 24 press release said.The EC has also said, through sources, that illegal immigrants from Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh have been found through this exercise.Almost three decades ago, on July 17, 1997, the Election Commission marked 3,70,000 people as “Doubtful” (D) voters against their names on the electoral roll. Over the years, many of them have been sent to Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) to prove their citizenship. Following the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, conducted between 2015-2019, 1.9 million people’s names were missing from the list.While in the Bihar SIR exercise, the EC has opposed accepting Aadhaar and Voter ID cards as proofs to be submitted by voters to prove their eligibility, the poll body has informed parliament that the process of linking voter ID and Aadhaar has not begun.The poll body’s reply came in response to a written question by RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha who sought to know statewise details of the number of citizens who have submitted their Aadhaar for linking with voter ID, the number of voter IDs that have been linked with Aadhaar, the number of voters for whom some discrepancy has been found between the details in their Aadhaar and their voter IDs and the number of voters whose names have been taken off the voting list after linking their Aadhaar to voter IDs.In response, the Election Commission through Meghwal said that the Representation of the People Act, 1950 which was amended by the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, allows Electoral Registration Officers to require the existing or prospective elector to provide the Aadhaar number for linking with voter ID on a voluntary basis.“The Election Commission vide its instruction dated 4th July, 2022, has launched the programme to collect the Aadhaar number of existing and prospective electors on a voluntary basis from 1st August, 2022 in all States and Union territories. The linking of Aadhaar with Election Photo Identity Card has not yet started,” the EC stated.As a consequence, the rest of Jha’s questions “do not arise”, the Election Commission added.In March, facing criticism over the duplication of Electors’ Photo Identity Cards (EPIC), the EC had set the ball rolling to link voter records with Aadhaar and said that it will begin the process of technical consultations with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).The Wire reported earlier that while the linkage does not address concerns of purification of electoral rolls, the Registration of Electors (Amendment) Rules, 2022 that followed the 2021 amendment already made Aadhaar mandatory by default through Form 6B. The form presents only two choices – either provide your Aadhaar number or state that you are not able to provide it “because I don’t have Aadhaar number”.In 2015, the Election Commission launched the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP), which included linking and authenticating the EPIC data with the UIDAI’s Aadhaar data. While the Supreme Court stopped the exercise, nearly 55 lakh voters in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were left out of the electoral process due to the linkage of EPIC and Aadhaar taken up by the EC in 2015.