By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 20 Mar: Joint Chief Electoral Officer, Uttarakhand, Namami Bansal today stated that many activities are being organised in the state to ensure safe and peaceful conduct of Lok Sabha General Elections 2024 and to increase voter awareness. Many theme-based activities have been organised for voter awareness. Bansal was briefing the media at the Media Centre at the Secretariat here today.
She reminded that there are 83, 21,207 voters in the state, and a special campaign is being run to increase awareness among voters to cast their votes. So far, 34,94,000 voters in the state have taken the oath to cast their vote in the Lok Sabha elections. She reminded that the voter awareness campaign was launched on 25 January, which is National Voters’ Day.
The Joint Chief Electoral Officer said that a calendar has also been prepared for various activities related to voter awareness from 13 February onwards. So far, 16 thousand events have been organised on voter awareness like henna competition, rangoli, slogan writing, in which 6.55 lakh voters have participated. About 5,700 marathons and rallies have also been organised for voter awareness, in which about 72,000 voters have participated. Around 25,000 small events have been organised in the state including speech and debate competitions. In the month of January, camps were organised in mission mode for voter registration. Till now 15, 232 camps have been organised for voter registration. Special campaigns were run to connect voters in Nari Niketans, old age homes and educational institutions. As many as 1.45 lakh first time voters aged between 18 to 19 years have been added in the state, who will be exercising their franchise for the first time. EPIC cards are also being delivered to them.
Bansal reminded that the voting percentage in the Lok Sabha elections 2019 in the state was around 61.5 percent. To increase the voting percentage, voters are being encouraged to come to the booth level and, for this, a booth level election management plan has also been prepared in each district. A booth level election management plan has been prepared in all 11,729 booths. Continuous efforts are being made to increase the voting percentage in the state, a target has been set to increase it to at least 75 percent. Bansal said that 2,290 cases were registered yesterday on violation of the Model Code of Conduct. In all, so far, about 5,800 cases of violation of the Model Code of Conduct have been registered.
