About 18 lakh service personnel enroll as voters

Nearly 18 lakh service personnel, including members of the armed forces, have so far enrolled as voters in the fresh electoral rolls prepared by the Election Commission from scratch to do away with errors.

At a recent seminar on service voters, the commission had hoped that 23 lakh such electors would be enrolled.

This was for the first time that the registration process was carried out online using the service voter portal of the poll panel, the EC said in a statement.

Members of the armed forces, central armed police forces, personnel of state police forces posted outside their state and employees of the Centre posted outside India are eligible to be enrolled as service voters.

The wife of a service voter, if she is residing with him, is also entitled to be enrolled as a service voter in the constituency specified by that person.

While the final publication of electoral rolls was done on October 23, the commission has allowed remaining service personnel to register as voters, the EC said.

The poll panel had found that the electoral rolls of service voters were faulty as many of those who had ceased to be in service or had passed away, continued to be part of the rolls, EC functionaries explained.

The draft rolls, published on October 4, contained names of 17,60,392 service personnel.