Residents go the extra mile

A city apartment’s welfare association from Whitefield just showed the way to ensure higher voter turn out in spite of hurdles. 

The Prestige Shantiniketan Apartment’s Owners Welfare Association arranged three tempo travellers and a minibus to ferry their residents to and from the polling booths.

The association made the arrangement after the Election Commission failed to address their request to change the polling station to a nearby post office. The designated polling booth–Hoodi’s Government School and College was over 2 km away from their apartment.

The distance did dampen the will of the residents to increase the voter turn out from the apartment. Pradeep K Nair, president of the association said that there was always a complaint that apartment dwellers did not vote and the move was to improve the situation.

“Last elections, we had just around 200 voters from our association, but this time we ensured more participation. Of the 2,150 voters along with 996 new voters, nearly 1,500 apartment dwellers voted,” he added.