HYDERABAD: The number of young voters in Telangana is set to record an eight-fold increase, as the Election Commission of India allowed 17-year-olds to enrol in advance for voter IDs from August 1, instead of doing the same after attaining 18 years of age as of January 1 for the same.
Officials said that this new provision will boost ECI’s efforts to enrol new young voters. They said that with the new provision, the number of young voters in Telangana will go up, to 10 lakh, from the present
1.36 lakh.
“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 ECI said.
The number of voters in Telangana is currently at 3.03 crore, as per the final electoral rolls released by the ECI in January, following special summary revision (SSR) 2022 from November 2021.
However, 18-19-year-olds only accounted for 1,36,496 of the same as lakhs of them could not register. Since the electoral roll was only updated on January 1 earlier, many 18-year-olds were unable to exercise their franchise in the elections held in the intervening period.
While 2,27,226 new voters were enrolled, 2,26,997 were deleted from the voters’ list for various reasons, such as deaths and relocation.
The ECI also used software to detect single voters with multiple voter ID cards, detecting 22.04 lakh with duplicate IDs. After verifications in 119 Assembly constituencies, 10,25,987 were struck off.
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