SVEEP
SVEEP or the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation program is the flagship program of Election Commission of India for the voter education, spreading voter awareness and promoting voter literacy in India. It was my privilege to utilize my time and energy to spread awareness among voters for informed participation in the electoral process.
The SVEEP campaign played a key role in ensuring for the first time a record voter turnout of 66.4% in India's historic general elections. A whole range of communication and awareness strategies were planned including information, motivation and facilitation.
As a youth icon of the district, I along with government officials designed various interventions around the youth, with additional gender focus within this segment, to remove any information gap and to facilitate youth participation in elections as a youth icon of the district, I worked in close contact with the The Campus Ambassadors to identify students, teachers and non-teaching staff and their family members who are not registered in the electoral rolls and facilitated their registration in the Electoral roll in coordination with the election machinery.
I assisted the election machinery to organize special drive for registrations including correction of errors, transposition of names etc in the electoral roll.
For reaching out to youth outside educational institutions, ECI had partnered with the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs and engaged various youth organizations affiliated with the Ministry. Sports competitions in both rural and urban areas was among the popular and my favourite activities taken up by me for engaging with these youth.
I, along with my team of volunteers and govt officials, organised Competitions like drawing, debates, declamations, quiz in educational institutions on elections and voting enthused young people. Activities like local and folk art competitions were used for targeting young rural populace. Sporting events like kite flying, motor rallies, cricket tournaments, marathon runs, mass mobilization events like rallies, human chain around the fateh sagar lake, and candle light vigils at town hall were utilized with good effect. Mock polls and dummy polling stations were effectively used to engage young people.
The task of raising awareness and convincing my people to vote and choose their leaders is fundamental to my understanding of democracy. Being part of this movement made me a part of something much bigger than myself and the amazing feeling of achievement after swimming the channel was nothing compared to the satisfaction of uplifting the Indian community.