In Lucknow, with the aim of augmenting the voter turnout, particularly by setting a new benchmark for the number of individuals visiting polling stations during the Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission (EC) has approached the district administration and the Education department. Their strategy involves enlisting the help of schoolchildren to persuade their parents to participate in voting. As part of this endeavor, students in Uttar Pradesh will soon be penning letters to their guardians, urging them to recognize the importance of a robust democracy and commit to verifying their names on the voter list and casting their ballots in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. This initiative, spearheaded by the Election Commission (EC), has garnered the support of Navdeep Rinwa, the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh, who has enlisted the cooperation of the district administration and the Education department to exert maximum effort in increasing voter turnout to align it with the national average.
This approach forms a component of the EC’s SVEEP (Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation) initiative, according to officials. The office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh has reached out to the Director General of school education, seeking the assistance of schoolchildren in the state to compose letters addressed to their parents. Parents will also be encouraged to endorse a ‘pledge letter’ affirming their commitment, along with all eligible members of their household, to exercise their voting rights in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Both parents are expected to sign the pledge letter, providing their contact information such as address, phone number, and email address.
Pratap Singh Baghel, the Director of Uttar Pradesh Basic Education, has dispatched a memorandum to all basic education officers, instructing them to obtain digital copies of comics, which serve as a pertinent and invaluable means of outreach, even in this digital age. Notably, the initiative incorporates a comic element, utilizing characters like Chacha Chaudhary and Sabu to creatively disseminate information related to elections, officials disclosed.
These characters will be leveraged to inspire all 1.9 crore schoolchildren affiliated with the Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Department to craft heartfelt letters to their parents, encouraging them to actively participate in the electoral process. Given their substantial influence among children and adolescents, this medium enables the EC to effectively connect with the younger demographic, nurturing a sense of enlightened and accountable citizenship from an early stage, officials emphasized.
The significance of this initiative is underscored by Uttar Pradesh’s consistent underperformance relative to the national average in successive general elections. In 2019, the voter turnout in Uttar Pradesh stood at 59.21 per cent, falling short of the national average of 67.4 per cent. Similarly, in 2014, the voter turnout in the state was recorded at 58.44 per cent, compared to the country’s average of 66.44 per cent.
