ELECTION AND CENSUS

The importance of developing the practice of citizenship development for electoral participation is vital to investment in future of democracy and its sustenance. Citizenship development in a democracy is about developing effective electoral engagement, participation, making informed choices and ethical ballot decisions. In the given context, one of the key goals of society is to have an active democratic citizenry originating in integrated civic and voter education and participation right from a young age. Young and Future Voters have been in focus across the democracies of the world for larger electoral participation through well designed electoral literacy programmes. As per the Census 2011, there are 14.2 crore young people in the age group 14-19 in India. Given the registration and voting age of 18, there is a sizeable voter age population in 18-19 besides an equally large population of the future voters in the age group 14- 17 who would become voters every year next. As per the Census Data 2011, there are 9.68 crore children in the age-group 14-17 years with 6.84 crore in rural and 2.83 crore in urban areas. Of these 6.97 crore were enrolled in schools, with 4.76 crore in rural and 2.21 crore in urban.