Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Campaign to enlist youth as voters

HYDERABAD: Election authorities have launched a special drive named Young Tarang to enlist 29 lakh out of the estimated 36 lakh youths in the State in the age group of 18-20 years as voters as they remained without voting right till now.

Out of the 36 lakh youths, 20 lakh are said to be students. In view of this, focus during Young Tarang, which will be undertaken from January 19 to 24, will be on students.

As part of the special arrangements made under Young Tarang, applications for enrolment will be kept in colleges, universities etc to enable the students aged above 18 years as on January 1, 2009, to fill them and submit to registration officers attested by the principals/vice-chancellors. Special camera teams will visit the institutions to photograph the applicants.

Youths who are not students, however, will have to approach revenue divisional office concerned for registration.

Finally, elector photo identity cards (EPIC) will be issued to the students and youths by February 15.

Chief Electoral Office I. V. Subba Rao interacted with district collectors, vice-chancellors, principals of colleges and heads of the government institutions like State Council of Higher Education through a video-conference, preparing them for the exercise.

Mr. Rao told reporters later that authorities had deleted 7 lakh voters’ names from the electoral rolls so far as they were found to be “duplicate” ones.

The exercise was being continued to remove another 7 lakh “duplicate” names. Following the first cleaning up of the rolls, the strength of the total electorate of the State dwindled to 5.7 crore from 5.77 crore by September- end.

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