- The Election Commission of India (ECI) has said that Service Voters are going to play a crucial and decisive role in cases of close contests in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
- Service voters are those who have service qualification.They include (a)member of Armed Forces of the Union of India (b)members of Armed Police forces of the States serving outside that state (c)a person employed under the Government of India,serving outside India and (d) member of a force to which provision of the Army Act 1950 have been made applicable
- As per the existing arrangements members of (a)Indian Army,Navy and Air Force (b)personnel of General Reserve Engineer Force (Border Road Organization) (c)Border Security Force (d)Indo Tibetan Border Police, (e)Assam Rifles (f)National Security Guards (g)Central Reserve Police Force (h)Central Industrial Security Force and (I)Sashastra Seema Bal are eligible to be registered as service voters.
- A Service Voter can cast his/her vote by proxy also.They may appoint (By applying to returning officer in Form 13 F available at the website of ECI) any person as his/her proxy to cast vote on his/her behalf in his/her at the polling station.However,proxy should be a registered voter of that constituency.
- As per the data sourced from the ECI website, this year a total of 16.6 lakh service voters are enrolled in the country in comparison to the figure of 13.2 lakh in 2014.
- While States like Uttar Pradesh,Bihar and Rajasthan have larger number of service voters,Uttarakhand has also got a large number of services voters.Garhwal parliamentary constituency has maximum number of service voters among all the five constituencies of Uttarakhand.
