Millions of Indians live and work in one place and are registered to vote in another. There is no general absentee ballot for them, so the honest answer is that you have three options, and two of them require a decision well before polling day.
Option one: move your registration
If the place you live in is now your ordinary residence, move your entry there. This is Form 8, shifting of residence, and it goes to the Electoral Registration Officer of the constituency you have moved to. See changing your address on the electoral roll.
Ordinary residence means where you actually live, not where you own property or where your family is from. A student in a hostel and a worker in a rented room both qualify where they live.
The cost is that you lose your vote in your home constituency. For many people that is the harder part of the decision, not the paperwork.
Option two: keep your registration and travel
You remain on the roll at home and go back to vote. This is what most people do, and it is why turnout in some constituencies visibly rises around polling day.
Polling day is a paid holiday for most employees under Section 135B of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which is worth knowing if your employer is unclear about it.
Option three: check whether you qualify as an absentee voter
Postal voting is available only to defined categories: service voters, electors aged 85 and above, those marked as persons with disability, notified essential services staff, and accredited media on poll duty. Full detail is in postal ballots and voting away from home.
Living in another city is not one of the categories. If someone tells you a migrant worker can simply request a postal ballot, they are wrong.
What you must not do
Do not register in both places. Filing Form 6 where you now live, while keeping your old entry, creates a duplicate. The declaration on Form 6 is a legal statement and a false one is punishable under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
If you already have two entries, fix it rather than leaving it. See duplicate entries and how to resolve them.
Decide early
Both of the first two options depend on the roll, and the roll freezes once an election is announced. Whichever you choose, act during the claims and objections window rather than in the campaign.
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