Centre today clarified that the name of persons whose Voter Ids are not linked with Aadhaar will not be struck off the voters list. It stressed that linking Voter ID with Aadhaar is voluntary. This was stated by Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in a written reply in the Lok Sabha. The Election Commission has launched the programme to collect Aadhaar numbers of existing and prospective electorates on a voluntary basis from August this year. On protection of database from being misused, the Minister said, the Commission is strictly following the guidelines prescribed by UIDAI in this regard and it does not store Aadhaar numbers in its database. He added that Aadhaar number is used only for authentication purposes and the poll body does not retrieve any personal information from the UIDAI database.<br />''<br />''<br />