Election Commission of Maharashtra urges eligible voters to enrol for coming civic polls

Mumbai: Taking advantage of the Election Commission of India (ECI) on-going special voter registration drive the State Election Commission of Maharashtra (SECM) is urging eligible voters to enrol their names in the voters list.

This is being done in view of the elections to 10 municipal corporations and other civic bodies between December 2016 and March 2017.

"The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and other civic bodies have issued advertisements urging eligible voters to enrol their names in the on-going special voter registration drive between October 8 to November 7," an official from SECM told PTI.

He further said that between December 2016 to March 2017, municipal corporations like Mumbai, Thane, Ulhasnagar, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Nagpur, Amravati, Akola and Solapur will go to polls.

Besides this 115 municipal councils, 26 Zilla Parishads and 297 Panchayat Samitis will also be going to polls. "In order to be able to vote in these civic elections the voters should have attained the age of 18 years on January 1, 2016," the official said.

"Thus, the SECM is intent on implementing the Systematic Voter Awareness and Registration (SVAR) programme. As part of the programme the SECM has approached BSNL, cinema halls, mobile companies to undertake free of cost public awareness campaigns urging eligible voters to enrol their names," he added.

The official further said that besides this the SECM has sought assistance of government departments like ' Higher and Technical Education, Urban Development, Agriculture, Cooperation, Industries and Labour and 28 other state and central government departments.

The SECM has also drawn up plans to seek services of Bollywood actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, social activist Anna Hazare and others, he said.