E-Paper
With ‘Dear Ma & Pa’, ‘Chacha Chaudhary’, voter turnout campaign turns innovative
The measure is part of ECI’s SVEEP (Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation) initiative.
The earnest endeavour to increase the voter turnout in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 Lok Sabha election is getting an animated touch with the help of smart tips from comic characters like Chacha Chaudhary and Sabu, besides motivating all 1.9 crore schoolchildren associated with the Uttar Pradesh basic education department to writing moving letters to their parents to participate enthusiastically in the electoral process.
All this is the initiative of the Election Commission of India under which the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer has roped in the district administration and the education department to go all out to increase the voter turnout so as to bring it on a par with the national average.
The measure is part of ECI’s SVEEP (Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation) initiative, officials said.
For instance, posters of the comic characters and the comics themselves are being used to spread awareness about voting with information about the process.
With their universal appeal, comic characters provide an engaging platform to convey election-related information creatively, officials said.
The comics will help kids to imagine the election process, and it will also help the older generation to revive their earlier days, they said.
Parents will also be requested to sign a “pledge letter” to ensure that they and all eligible members of their family use their right to franchise in Lok Sabha Polls-2024.
Uttar Pradesh has been falling short of the national average for successive general elections.
In 2019, UP’s poll percentage was 59.21% as against the national average of 67.4%. Similarly in 2014, voter turnout in U.P. was 58.44% against the country’s average of 66.44%. Likewise, Lucknow’s poll percentage in 2019 was pegged at 57.68% while in 2014 it was 54.90%. Voter turnout of Allahabad and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats did not go beyond 53.50% in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Pratap Singh Baghel, director basic education, penned a letter on March 18 to all basic shiksa adhikaris (BSAs) to download soft copies of comics, which are a relevant and irreplaceable outreach medium, even in this age of digital media.
With a significant following among children and teenagers, this medium enables the Election Commission to effectively engage with the youth, fostering a sense of informed and responsible citizenship from an early age, officials added.
The office of the chief electoral officer, U.P, has written to the director general (school education) seeking help of school children of Uttar Pradesh in writing letters to their parents.
The CEO, UP, has also provided the format of the pledge letter that the parents of these school children would be expected to fill and sign pledging to get their names as well as names of all family members above the age of 18 years registered in the voter list and exercise their franchise in the forthcoming polls. Both parents would sign the pledge letter providing their address, mobile number and e-mail id.
In the missive dated March 17, 2024, a copy of which is with HT, additional chief electoral officer, U.P, Nidhi Srivastava has said that for the seven-phase Lok Sabha Polls-2024, a target of 70% polling has been fixed, for which voter awareness initiatives are being undertaken.
Lucknow district magistrate Suryapal Gangwar said, “We want to take the voting percentage up to 70%.”
Prayagraj district magistrate/district election officer Navneet Singh Chahal said that voter awareness drive is underway in the district with an aim to motivate more and more eligible voters to come out and exercise their franchise in the parliamentary polls-2024.
The appealing letter that the school kids will be writing to their parents will say:
“I know that you love me a lot. You work hard day and night to ensure a bright future for me. My future is linked with a strong democracy of the country and for this I would like you to pledge to check your names in the voter list, and if due to any reason the names have not been registered in the voter list, get the names duly registered in it and surely vote in the forthco0ming Lok Sabha Polls-2024.”
