Pune: To encourage people in cities to vote, election officials and members of the Housing Development Group have launched the “My Society, Aware Society” campaign.
This project focuses on areas where people have not voted much in the past.
This project is very important, especially since less than 45% of people living in key urban assembly seats like Pune Cantonment and Shivajinagar actually went to vote in the 2019 assembly elections.
A senior election official told TOI on Saturday that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has identified these areas due to their low voter turnout.
Before announcing the elections, the Election Commission of India had directed election officials to tackle voter apathy in urban areas, paying special attention to 15 constituencies in the state where voter turnout had fallen below 50% in the last assembly elections. In the 2019 assembly elections, the voter turnout in Shivajinagar and Pune Cantonment was only 43%. In contrast, the overall voter turnout in Pune district was 58%, lower than the national average of 61%.
Minal Kalaskar, deputy chief electoral officer, told TOI that the initiative has been launched in all 21 assembly constituencies of the district to increase voter turnout. “The senior members of the housing societies have undertaken to reach out to as many members as possible to ensure their participation on the polling day,” she said. This time, 126 polling stations were set up in the housing associations to make voting easier. This is a significant increase over the 35 Lok Sabha elections held in these societies. The election authorities have identified about 2,000 polling booths where the voter turnout was low in past elections.
Suhas Patwardhan, chairman of Maharashtra State Housing Federation, said, “We have instructed all board members of the 19,000 registered housing societies in the district to ensure that residents understand the importance of voting.” “With the ‘My Society, Aware Society’ initiative, we are empowering the committee members to take the lead in promoting democratic participation,” said another member of the federation.
Rohan Desai, an activist from the National Society of Clean Cities, emphasized, “The ECI needs to set up a dedicated team of BLOs for election duties and their contact numbers should be publicly available to facilitate communication before the elections.” After talking to ward election officers, housing society representatives are actively helping to raise awareness among voters, he said.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar along with Election Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Dr. SS Sandhu have already issued special instructions to election officials in Pune, Mumbai city, Thane and Mumbai suburbs. Their aim is to draw up a targeted action plan to address the ongoing challenge of urban voter disenchantment in 15 assembly constituencies where voter turnout has fallen below 50%.