The reason behind record voting is “SVEEP”

aaron, Apr 20, 2019, 4:14 PM IST

Mangaluru: 77.90% of voting has occurred in Dakshina Kannada district during the 2019 Lok Sabha election and thereby has also broken all records. What is special is that the reason behind this increase in voter turnout is due to the efforts of the Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) committee.

The district SVEEP committee conducted a variety of attempts to make the people participate in the transparent and fair election. SVEEP created an action plan to achieve 90% of voting. But, during the April 18^th election, 77390% voting was achieved and aim of 90% voting remained unfulfilled. However, the SVEEP Committee members say that the present achievement is the stage setup for the next election.

Several awareness programmes

SVEEP committee encouraged the people to cast their votes through various awareness programmes it’s conducted at the 1,861 booths within the limits of 230 GPs’. Attempts were made to attract the people towards voting through various programmes and competitions like cycling, marathon, massive human chain along the coast, quiz competition in association with “Udayavani”, surfing, street plays and many other programmes.

Demo on VVPT usage

Most have a confusion regarding pressing the button on VVPAT. In order to resolve this confusion, the people were provided with a demonstration on the use of VVPAT. This demo was carried out in 1014 centres and 1,53,870 people participated in the demos and understood the use of VVPAT.

Attracting youth towards voting

In order to attract the youth towards voting, Electoral Literacy Clubs were created at all the high school, PUC, degree, medical and polytechnic institutions throughout the district. Besides, 80 persons from 40 famous institutions were appointed as ambassadors and were used to create ID cards and to encourage people to get registered as voters. Election schools were opened at the 1,861 booths in the city where awareness on voting was provided. Through this effort of SVEEP, 21,321 youth voters in the district got themselves registered.  But, out of this number, there are some 18-year-olds who got registered by themselves.

Last year, 42 people of the third gender casted their vote. This time, with the aim to further increase the number, the people of the third gender were approached and their names were added to the list. As a result of this, more than 100 people belonging to the third gender have cast their votes this election. 5 Sakhi polling booths in the city were attractively decorated. Of the other polling booths, 5 were provided with traditional touch while three polling stations were reserved for the special abled.

Effective use of social media

What is special is that the SVEEP committee conducted awareness programmes on voting through social media and it received good response from the youth voters. Posts regarding the importance of voting were shared on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Whatsapp. On April 18^th, the SVEEP Facebook page displayed the time remaining to cast vote which refreshed every 2 hours, thereby encouraging the youth to cast their vote at the earliest.

I’m proud

“It is a pleasant fact that I have participated in election during my student life. I am involved in inculcating awareness on voting amongst every individual and in spreading awareness on voting amongst the people through street plays. The increase in the percentage of voting is the clear example on the importance of the role of the campus ambassadors of the district SVEEP Committee during the election,” said Sudesh Manila, SVEEP Campus Ambassador, Aloysius Evening College Student

Voting increased due to efforts

“SVEEP committee put in efforts beyond their strength to attract voters towards voting. Several programmes were organised to spread awareness on voting and it has reached scores of people. Though it was not possible to achieve the goal, the amount of voting due to the efforts has increase nonetheless,” said Dr Selvamani R, President, DK Zilla SVEEP Committee