New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced that all the Indian citizens above 17 years of age can now apply in advance to get enrolled in the voters list and not wait until the voting age of 18 years.

The statement issued by ECI recently stated ‘Youngsters above 17 years can apply in advance for having their names enrolled in the voters list and no need to wait for the pre-requisite criterion of attaining the age of 18 years on Jan. 1 of a year.’

The Commission led by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioner (EC) Anup Chandra Pandey has directed the Chief Electoral Officers (ECO) and Electoral registration officers of all States to work out tech-enabled solutions to enable the youths to file their advance applications concerning three     subsequent qualifying dates – Apr. 1, July 1 and Oct. 1 and not just Jan. 1 of every year.

The move was taken following the Electoral Roll was only updated on Jan. 1, which meant that a large number of young people who completed 18 years had to wait for the particular summary revision of the following year for enrolment and were not able to participate in elections held in the intervening period.

This 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. After getting registered, the young voters will be issued an Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC). For the current round of annual revision of the electoral roll, any citizen attaining the age of 18 years by 2023 can also submit an advance application for registration.

The Commission has already managed to induct 1,736,181 new voters between 18 and 19. Last year, 14,526,678 (14.5 million) new voters were added to the list, the Officials said. The Commission has also made the registration forms more user-friendly and newly modified forms will come into force on Aug. 1, 2022. The commission has also begun linking Aadhaar numbers with Electoral Roll data.