Dimapur: The Nagaland Board of School Education (NBSE) has notified all the heads of educational institutions to facilitate prospective students to register in the electoral roll.
The board issued the notice on Friday following instructions from the Election Commission of India (ECI) to maximize the enrolment of young/prospective electors from the campuses through active participation of educational institutions.
It said an error-free and updated electoral roll is a prerequisite to conducting a free, fair and inclusive election.
The electoral roll is updated regularly through the annual summary revision and continuous updation, wherein the special focus is given to the registration of new/prospective electors who are or will be eligible for registration in the electoral roll.
The board informed that earlier, the registration in the electoral roll was done with respect to one qualifying date – January 1 of the coming year.
However, with the recent change in the registration process, the provision of four qualifying dates has been introduced – January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1 of the year – in which the final publication of the electoral roll is done.
The provision has enabled more prospective electors to submit advance applications or claims for registration in Form-6, upon the draft publication of the electoral roll, usually done in November every year.
Noting that registration of new/prospective electors has always been a challenging task, the board said in spite of the Election Commission’s consistent efforts for encouraging and increasing enrolment in the 18-19 age group, there has always been a shortfall in the registration number.
As the majority of such prospective electors are part of the educational institutes, the commission felt that registration of young/prospective electors can be maximized through active participation of educational institutions.
This can be done by providing a dedicated space on the institution’s websites where a link for “registration of new voters” along with awareness slogans may be given to encourage the students for their registration as electors.
This link would direct the applicant to Form-6 “Registration of New Voter” on the national voter’s service (NVS) portal.
The board also said a field embedded towards the end of the registration/examination form with the tagline “application form to be a new voter” may be provided.
A click on the same will direct the applicant to Form-6 “Registration of New Voter” on the NVS portal by hyperlinking the tagline with the portal, it added.