Left out at 18: Teen writes to EC after being denied chance to vote in civic polls

18-year-old Rupika Singh is denied voting eligibility in Mumbai due to cut-off rules, highlighting injustice for first-time voters born after October 2006.

MUMBAI: Excited to cast her first vote, 18-year-old Rupika Anil Singh did everything by the book — collected the required documents, confirmed her eligibility, and applied to register as a voter in April this year. But when she attempted to enrol online, her application was denied. The reason: she had turned 18 in April 2024, after the stipulated cut-off date of October 1, 2023.

Left out at 18: Teen writes to EC after being denied chance to vote in civic polls

Undeterred, Singh tried again — this time offline — at Booth 181 in the Mahim Assembly constituency, where her family lives. She was turned back once more, told that only those who had turned 18 before the previous October were eligible to be added to the rolls.

She decided to wait and watch for the next revision, hoping the cut-off would be updated. But by September, she learnt that the electoral rolls for the upcoming Mumbai civic elections had already been frozen — with all additions, deletions and corrections completed by the end of June.

“I am not standing only for myself, but for hundreds of thousands of others who are being denied their right to vote despite being eligible,” Singh said. On October 1, she wrote to the State Election Commission, calling the system “a clear injustice to the youth of Maharashtra.”

Under the current rule, only those born on or before October 1, 2006, are eligible to vote in the upcoming municipal elections — effectively excluding everyone born after that date, including those turning 18 this year. This means an entire year’s cohort of first-time voters will be unable to participate in electing representatives for Mumbai’s 227 municipal wards, which have remained vacant for over three years.

“I wanted to vote to understand how elections and politics actually work, and to choose my representative to fix issues like waterlogging, garbage management and traffic,” said Singh, a first-year MBA Tech student in Data Science.

According to data she accessed, Mumbai recorded 1,79,861 births in 2006 and 1,78,402 in 2007 — an average of around 179,000 potential new voters who may miss out on their first election despite crossing 18.

Joint chief electoral officer Manohar Parkar confirmed that the cut-off date was frozen ahead of the 2024 Assembly polls. “Since no special summary revision was held this year, the same cut-off date continued,” he said. “Those who turned 18 after October 2024 were not given an opportunity to register. A revision is due soon, which will bring a new cut-off date — but it may not apply to the upcoming civic elections.”

For Singh, the wait to vote may now stretch further. “I’ll keep following up,” she said, “but it feels unfair that turning 18 isn’t enough to have your say in democracy.”