A 93-year-old man in India named Sher Singh Hedko will vote for the first time in his lifetime.
He is from the Kanker district of Chhattisgarh state and will exercise his democratic right during assembly elections scheduled this year.
Local media said that he may not have voted before because he did not have the necessary documents.
However, his name was added to the voters' list during a door-to-door campaign launched by a government official.
The district collector, Priyanka Shukla, initiated the campaign in the area where Hedko resides.
She said that the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) visited people at their doorsteps and helped them add their names to the list if they were not already included.
Hedko's story is a reminder that many people in India - especially those who are poor and from marginalized groups - face challenges in registering to vote.
A 2020 report in the Mint newspaper found that people from economically disadvantaged and marginalized communities tend to face additional marginalization when confronted with bureaucratic processes requiring legacy data, such as proof of ancestry, or documentation.
In 2009, India introduced the Aadhaar, a digital identity system, to address the lack of a proper ID system.
However, there have been reports of various difficulties, inconveniences, and exclusions in Aadhaar-related schemes that disproportionately affect India's most marginalized populations.
Despite these challenges, many elderly people in India go to vote.
In 2019, 102-year-old Shyam Saran Negi became one of the oldest Indian voters, making him the centre of attention of the country's media.
In 2020, in a by-poll in northern Uttar Pradesh state, 115-year-old Jamuni Devi was celebrated for her will to go to a voting centre despite old age.
