The Election Commission and Facebook on Monday announced a pact under which the social media giant will remind the youth who recently turned 18 to register to vote by sending them reminders on their Facebook profile.
Under the campaign, all users who are going to turn 18 between now and December 31 will get a "birthday wish" message on their birthday with a reminder encouraging them to register with the poll panel to vote.
To those who have already turned 18 this year, same reminder will be sent on November 30.
The reminder will be sent in 13 languages -- English, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Assamese, Marathi and Oriya.
The message will have a "register now" button which will take the users to the National Voters' Services Portal upon clicking.
"I am happy to announce that the Election Commission of India has launched a special drive to enrol all prospective and eligible young citizens of India as voters who are turning 18 years or more than 18 years on January 1, 2018," said Chief Election Commissioner Achal Kumar Jyoti in a statement.
"This partnership of the Election Commission with Facebook for the dissemination of Information will help us reach out to the young digital community of India in fulfilling our mission 'No Voter to be Left Behind' and 'Every Vote Counts’."
Last year in October, Facebook had partnered with the Election Commission of India to run a voter registration drive in the five states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur which were going to the polls in 2017.
"Youth is the future of India and it is very important that they take part in the biggest democratic exercise of elections. Election commission in collaboration with Facebook is conducting a special drive to register young people as voters who will attain the age of 18 years on January 1, 2017. I appeal to people from all walks of life to register as voters through the process,” Chief Electoral Officer Radha Raturi had said.
(With IANS inputs)