Youngsters pledge to vote

Braving the heat, several young enthusiastic students turned up to attend Hindustan Times and Janaagraha’s session on ‘One Billion Voters’, at Laxmi Nagar in East Delhi on Friday.

Braving the heat, several young enthusiastic students turned up to attend Hindustan Times and Janaagraha’s session on ‘One Billion Voters’, at Laxmi Nagar in East Delhi on Friday.

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Impressed with the campaign that aims at enabling citizens to “make an informed choice” by creating and disseminating complete information on all candidates standing for elections, and mobilising citizen volunteers to conduct door to door drives in their neighbourhood, the youngsters pledged their support.

“I have four days off before my exams start, but I want to utilise them to campaign door- to-door in my neighbourhood,” said 18-year-old Akash Choudhury, an engineering student from Ghaziabad.

His friend Sunil Sharma promised to help out the organisation as a booth-level volunteer for the next three to four months.

“I will visit every flat in my apartment building, and motivate them to vote. I feel that if I request them, they might consider,” he said, collecting around 900 leaflets for distribution.

Lalit Mohan Sharma, general secretary of the South Vishwas Nagar Welfare Association, enquired about what role resident
welfare associations could play in encouraging residents to vote.

“RWA members are quite well connected. They can educate residents on how to bring out their problems, and meet their needs by voting,” said Vijay Pamarathi, a Janaagraha member.

Suman R., programme coordinator, Janaagraha said, “Everyone wants change. If such like-minded people come together and work towards creating change, then we will succeed. We have tried our best by the means of our website www.myobv.org to use technology to create social platform for such people.”