Youngsters Over 17 Can Now Apply For Voter ID Cards In Advance, Says EC: All You Need To Know

Youngsters over the age of 17 can now apply in advance to enroll as voters and need not wait to fulfill the pre-requisite criterion of attaining the age of 18 years on January 1 of a year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced Thursday.

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¡°17+ year old youngsters can now apply in advance for having their names enrolled in voter¡¯s list and not necessarily have to await the pre-requisite criterion of attaining age of 18 years on 1st January of a year,¡± the commission said in a statement.

Electoral roll will be updated

The electoral roll will be updated every quarter, and eligible youngsters can be registered in the next quarter of the year in which they have attained the qualifying age of 18 years, according to the ECI.

Once the new voters are registered, they will be issued Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC).

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¡°For the current round of annual revision of electoral roll, 2023, any citizen attaining the age of 18 years by April 1, July 1 and October 1 of 2023 can also submit an advance application for registration as a voter from the date of draft publication of electoral roll,¡± the statement said.

Directions passed on

The statement said the commission led by chief election commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar and election commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey had directed the chief electoral officers and electoral registration officers of all states to work out tech-enabled solutions to enable the youth to file their advance applications concerning three subsequent qualifying dates, which are April 1, July 1 and October 1, and not just January 1.

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Since the electoral roll was only updated on January 1 earlier, it meant that many young persons who completed 18 years had to wait for the special summary revision of the next year for enrollment and were unable to participate in elections held in the intervening period.

This provision will boost EC¡¯s efforts to enrol new young voters who turn 18 in a year, for which an amendment was recently made to allow quarterly registration of voters.

1.7 million youngsters enrolled

EC has already managed to induct 1,736,181 (1.7 million) new voters between the ages of 18-19, people familiar with the matter said. Last year, 14,526,678 (14.5 million) new voters were added to the list.

The commission has identified targeted areas where the number of voters was less than its estimates and directed booth-level workers to undertake extensive awareness programmes to bring in new voters.

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The commission has also begun the process of linking Aadhaar numbers with electoral roll data.

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