Election officer eases process for students to register as voters in Pune

Speaking to The Indian Express, Kalaskar said a letter from the hostel warden confirming that a student resides in Pune will be taken as residence proof for voter registration.

Since the elections last year for the state Assembly, the district has added around 40,000 new members, aged 18-19, to the electoral roll. “Systematic Voter’s Education and Electoral Participation(SVEEP) programme is conducted by the Election Commission of India in colleges in the form of camps to enrol the voters who are freshers in college,” she said.

“We have conducted two to three kinds of other activities as well. The first activity was called ‘of the student, to the student, by the student’ and started at Cummins Engineering College, where we gave training to ten college students. Then, we gave one week for the students to get the documents necessary to enrol their names in the voter’s list. After that, we conducted an activity in their college computer lab. They had to enrol their name, the names of their friends, and their relatives in the list. We conducted the same activity in 350 other colleges within one day. We did that during September 2023 and managed to get 18,500 registrations,” she said.

Many students who move to Pune from other cities claim the major issue is residential proof, especially for those who prefer to stay in hostels. According to the rules, residence is defined as a place where a person has slept for seven nights. The DEO said anyone who is an ordinary area resident could enrol on the voter’s list.

The DEO further encouraged everyone to check out the website for Electoral Literacy Clubs to understand more about these activities conducted in schools and colleges.

Many students in and around Pune are not registered as voters due to the “complicated process of application” or “lack of residential proof,” claim students from various colleges like MIT and Symbiosis.

“To enrol your name in the voters’ list, you need your Aadhaar card. If you don’t have an Aadhaar card, any document showing your photo identity can be used, such as your birth certificate and your resident certificate. A resident certificate could be documents like a rent agreement, light bill, gas bill, or tax receipt,” said Kalaskar.

The DEO highlighted the most common problem when students have already enrolled in their home districts/states, and their parents prefer for them to vote there rather than enroll in a new city. “ One should absolutely update your district. Vote from wherever one lives. It need not be their hometown. It could be anywhere,” she said.

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