As with every Indian election, the government sites for voter registration and search are again in a big mess. There is no site that provides an easy and functional search of the electoral lists. However there are a couple which come close.

*** Update Oct 2009 Maharashtra State Elections – Most of the sites below that worked for the Loksabha elections, seem to have bombed for the State Elections. At last check, you can do an election voter list search for Maharashtra at  http://ceo.maharashtra.gov.in/.
The direct links are (Marathi) http://220.225.73.214/marathi/ & (English) http://220.225.73.214/marathi/FrmSearchPage.aspx?ID=1

For Mumbai & Thane http://220.225.73.202/

Looking at the website addresses (URLs), unfortunately this again seems like a short term measure from the government, so if you land on this page for a voter list search for any election after the Maharashtra State Elections 2009, these links might not work.

*** Very imp - As the official data seems to have been collected in Devanagari, the English spellings are anybody’s guess. Think how a govt. clerk would spell your name if he/she read it in Devanagari. Try several combinations.

1. Although not a government site, PuneCongress.com provides a search of the Pune electoral rolls. The site has a rather strange line at the bottom “Marathi Dynamic Font script will support on IE 5.5, 6 , 7, 8 It may not support to other browsers like FireFox, Safari, Opera, Mobile Browsers, Chrome,etc. “. So while it is good to know that the creator of the site is aware of several browsers, it beats me why he has listed them all, if the site essentially only works with IE.  Moral of story – Use Internet Explorer.
   http://www.punecongress.com/html/votersearch.aspx
2. The Pune district collector’s office has launched a voter list search site http://www.pune-election.info/. The site is extremely slow. I waited for several minutes but got no response to the search query I had submitted. Hope you have better luck. The press item said -
   “Voters can verify their status in voter lists by using search engine launched by district collector office. Voters may visit www.pune-election.info for it. They can also send an SMS to mobile number 9422982669 to get details. Voter should type full name and address and assembly constituency number, if known, and send SMS to above mobile number, informed District Collector.”
   
3. If your name search fails, however you manage to locate someone else from your neighbourhood, note the “list number” for that person. It is quite likely that your name will be in that same list. Then go over to to http://pune.gov.in/election/election.html and download the PDF for that list number for your zone. If your name doesn’t figure in the PDF as well, you probably are not listed at all, so time to take drastic measures and rush to the voter registration center.
4. The election commision sites http://eci.nic.in/ , http://stateelection.maharashtra.gov.in/, are quite ordinary, but the State site does have a search facility. Please try these links. As it seems to be a temporary search server that has been put up, i suspect these links will stop working soon after the election. One hopes that they work at least till the elections.  I haven’t actually seen a search working, as despite waiting for a long time, the server never responded. Try your luck in the middle of the night, when the server might actually be able to take your query.
   http://122.168.101.114/
   http://122.168.101.114/marathi/FrmSearchPage.aspx?ID=0 (English)
   http://122.168.101.114/marathi/FrmSearchPage.aspx?ID=1

Overall, the voter search scene is quite bad. Fortunately voter registration has improved quite a bit, primarily through jaagore.com . It is easily the best site out there for voter registrations. Although it won’t actually get you registered, it does help.

Good luck and do vote for a good candidate and not based solely on whom your family has always been voting for.

PS – Have you noticed how privacy is such a non issue in India. You can easily access anybody’s full name, address, age… Easy for a politician to figure out the exact caste, age, religion based balance in his constituency. I doubt if our politicians do such studies. However I am sure canny marketing folk would be swiping the voter lists for their promotions. One wonders if voter lists in the US and the developed world are made publicly available.