Union Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh,Congress leader Pawan Khera on Thursday alleged that millions of Indians would be pushed out of both democratic and welfare frameworks following the (SIR) carried out by the Election Commission of India.
Khera’s comments came in the backdrop of a recent remark made by Union Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh, who claimed that Aadhaar will no longer be the basis for payments to government scheme beneficiaries. Instead, biometric authentication and voter ID numbers, or Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers, will be used to identify beneficiaries and process payments.
“Aadhaar-enrolment centres are now everywhere, you can find one in every street. An can be issued to anyone in just five minutes,” Singh said during a National Workshop on People’s Plan Campaign 2026-27, last week, according to The Indian Express.
“The Aadhaar card will no longer be the basis. Instead, payments to beneficiaries will be processed using their biometrics and their voter ID (EPIC) number,” the minister added.
Criticizing the move, Khera, a Congress Rajya Sabha MP, said, “This was the plan all along.”
“The SIR exercise has already removed at least 13.3 crore Indians from the electoral rolls. Now the absence of a is being floated as grounds to deny ration, housing, health insurance and guaranteed employment,” he said.
“This is the larger design. First, strip people of their political voice by deleting them from the rolls. Then strip them of their welfare entitlements for not being on them,” the Congress leader added.
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 Singh 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”.
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.
