Young voters, the statistics say, are the largest constituency in the country. There have never been more first-time voters, and everyone from political parties to media houses are courting them to find out what makes them tick and who they will vote for as they venture unsullied into the world of hyperbolic opinions and grand passions.
However, it seems to be easier to become eligible to vote (by the simple act of being Indian and turning 18) than actually getting the state to recognise your right to vote.
It took five years, five applications and pleading with the Election Commission to add my name to the rolls before I was finally able to participate in the great exercise of Indian democracy for the first time on Thursday. From reports, it seems I was lucky: tens of thousands of Mumbaikars found themselves missing from the rolls. My name, barely two weeks on the list, managed to stay on it. It is also spelled correctly, visible online, and had not been transported to another constituency.
Despite the EC having sternly instructed states to prepare error-free rolls in December, this election continued to find several old-time voters fuming at their polling stations as they realised too late that their names did not figure on the updated list. I, however, did not join the ranks of senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani and HDFC Bank chairman Deepak Parekh, whose names had vanished. One week before the election, I received a laminated electoral photo identity card at my door. The rest of my family also got EC slips reminding them of the date, time and location of the poll booth.
I have applied to be put on the election rolls so often, I am intimately familiar with the difference between Forms 6, 6(A), 7, 8 and 8(A), and could probably fill the first in my sleep. My first attempt to register was in 2008, when I was heady with the idea of exercising my franchise and enthusiastically submitted my papers to a youth organisation conducting a registration drive in my college.
They must have pitched their folders of photocopies of our identity cards into the sea as soon as they left the building. Nobody who registered with them found their names on the rolls in 2009, except for those canny ones who, trusting nothing and no one, had filed their papers with multiple organisations and at the local Election Registration Office, in the hope that at least one of those would work.
Having lost my chance to let the country know whether I preferred Manmohan Singh over LK Advani in that election, I resigned myself to marking my choice for Maharashtra's leader for the assembly poll later that year. One visit to the election office and several months later, I was unable to show my uninked middle finger to people without causing offence. (The Maharashtra assembly election was only a few months after the general election, so the EC recommended that the middle finger be inked instead of the index one, as is the convention.)
The Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika election was important too, I consoled myself. Who else would ensure our roads continued to be riddled with potholes and that the people who needed water the most would continue to have to steal it? In 2011, armed with a third form and set of identity documents, I marched to the election office yet again, slammed my papers on their desk and insisted that they count me as a voting citizen of this country. I must not have spoken loud enough.
I tried once more in October 2013, only to be told that the election drive had ended the previous day and that I should return in January. By January, I had learnt of a wonderful online form that did not require me to visit the election office at all to submit papers – until February, when I anxiously visited the election office to see where the card might be.
“How will you vote if you don’t have a paper receipt?” the woman behind the desk demanded as she thrust a fresh Form 6 at me. “Fill that out. Who told you all these online forms work? You people are too smart.”
As it turned out, she was right.
However, it seems to be easier to become eligible to vote (by the simple act of being Indian and turning 18) than actually getting the state to recognise your right to vote.
It took five years, five applications and pleading with the Election Commission to add my name to the rolls before I was finally able to participate in the great exercise of Indian democracy for the first time on Thursday. From reports, it seems I was lucky: tens of thousands of Mumbaikars found themselves missing from the rolls. My name, barely two weeks on the list, managed to stay on it. It is also spelled correctly, visible online, and had not been transported to another constituency.
Despite the EC having sternly instructed states to prepare error-free rolls in December, this election continued to find several old-time voters fuming at their polling stations as they realised too late that their names did not figure on the updated list. I, however, did not join the ranks of senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani and HDFC Bank chairman Deepak Parekh, whose names had vanished. One week before the election, I received a laminated electoral photo identity card at my door. The rest of my family also got EC slips reminding them of the date, time and location of the poll booth.
I have applied to be put on the election rolls so often, I am intimately familiar with the difference between Forms 6, 6(A), 7, 8 and 8(A), and could probably fill the first in my sleep. My first attempt to register was in 2008, when I was heady with the idea of exercising my franchise and enthusiastically submitted my papers to a youth organisation conducting a registration drive in my college.
They must have pitched their folders of photocopies of our identity cards into the sea as soon as they left the building. Nobody who registered with them found their names on the rolls in 2009, except for those canny ones who, trusting nothing and no one, had filed their papers with multiple organisations and at the local Election Registration Office, in the hope that at least one of those would work.
Having lost my chance to let the country know whether I preferred Manmohan Singh over LK Advani in that election, I resigned myself to marking my choice for Maharashtra's leader for the assembly poll later that year. One visit to the election office and several months later, I was unable to show my uninked middle finger to people without causing offence. (The Maharashtra assembly election was only a few months after the general election, so the EC recommended that the middle finger be inked instead of the index one, as is the convention.)
The Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika election was important too, I consoled myself. Who else would ensure our roads continued to be riddled with potholes and that the people who needed water the most would continue to have to steal it? In 2011, armed with a third form and set of identity documents, I marched to the election office yet again, slammed my papers on their desk and insisted that they count me as a voting citizen of this country. I must not have spoken loud enough.
I tried once more in October 2013, only to be told that the election drive had ended the previous day and that I should return in January. By January, I had learnt of a wonderful online form that did not require me to visit the election office at all to submit papers – until February, when I anxiously visited the election office to see where the card might be.
“How will you vote if you don’t have a paper receipt?” the woman behind the desk demanded as she thrust a fresh Form 6 at me. “Fill that out. Who told you all these online forms work? You people are too smart.”
As it turned out, she was right.
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