Andhra Pradesh will head to simultaneous Legislative Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in less than a month, on April 11. The Election Commission of India has already announced the schedule and residents in the state have only a few days left to register to vote if they have not done so already, or have found that their name is not on the electoral rolls.
While elections to the 175 Assembly seats and the 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh will see a single-phase poll on April 11, 2019, the last day for candidates to file nominations is March 25.
The Election Commission requires those who want to vote to register at least 10 days before the last date for filing nominations, making deadline for registrations in Andhra Pradesh March 15.
"There is still time. If your name is not on the list, the process is simply to fill a form 6. There is no other way. If you want to vote in this election, you must apply before March 15. Citizens can either go to the local tahsildar's office and submit the form offline or else they can do the same online," Andhra Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Gopalakrishna Dwivedi told reporters in Amaravati earlier this week.
"We have already added 13 lakh voters to the rolls and presently we have around 2,64,712 form-6 applications pending," he added.
How to register to vote?
What is an electoral roll?
An electoral roll is a list of names prepared by the Election Commission of India. This includes the names of all the people, aged 18 years and above, who have voter ID cards: basically, all the people who will be able to vote for the upcoming elections.
If you already have a voter ID card, then ideally, your name should appear on the electoral roll. However, sometimes this is not the case – many people have realised only when they reach the polling booth that their name is not on the electoral roll, despite the fact that they have a voter ID. Hence, it is crucial to check if your name appears on the voter list ahead of the polls.
Additionally, in Andhra, the YSRCP has been filing several Form-7 applications, requesting en masse deletion of names and accusing TDP of creating 'bogus voters' in their party’s favour. They have also approached the Election Commission of India claiming that Andhra Pradesh has 59 lakh bogus voters. YSRCP chief Jagan Mohan Reddy has also accused AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu of deleting voters who are in favour of YSRCP. The TDP has denied these allegations.