INK UP AT @18

MORE than 1.8 crore young voters in the 18- and 19-year-old bracket are eligible to vote in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. They constitute about 1.89 per cent of the total voters registered in the country, according to the Election Commission data.

- PARVEZ SULTAN

Young people who turned 18 on January 1 qualified to be registered as the voters. The number of firsttime voters has seen a rise of approximately 30 lakh in comparison to the previous Lok Sabha polls held in 2019.

The threshold for exercising franchise had been 21 years since the general elections held in 1951-52. The voting eligibility was brought down by three years in 1989.

While the decade of 1980-90 witnessed tumults in political sphere in the country-weakening of non-Congress parties, re-emergence and assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, rise and fall Rajiv Gandhi as a youngest prime minister, division in the grand old party, and experiment of the United Front government -two major reforms took place simultaneously to further the agenda of strengthening the democratic setup and cementing the faith of people in the polling process. Electronic voting machines were used for the first time in a bye-election in Kerala in 1982 and the minimum age for qualifying as a voter was lowered in 1989 with amendments in the rules.

Granting voting rights at an early age was the outcome of persistent efforts of the lawmakers as they had been advocating bringing down the voting age in India at par with other liberal democracies.