They gave up sleep to wake up voters to importance of polls

A large number of Bangaloreans sacrificed their early morning sleep on a Sunday to propagate the importance of voting in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The citizens, including IT professionals, gathered in Koramangala for the ‘I will vote, my friends will vote’ campaign that was launched by Pledge2Vote, a citizen initiative to spread awareness on the importance of voting. 

A cycle rally, organised in the occasion, was flagged off by Nandan Nilekani, chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

Speaking to the cyclists before the flag-off, Nilekani said: “Voters have to become active partners in the electoral process, it doesn’t matter who you vote for. But, make it a point to visit the polling booth on election day.” 

Acknowledging the huge turnout of participants, B N Vijayakumar, MLA from Jayanagar, said, “The attendance for the rally is heartening. So many of you want to spread the message. But, there is a need to continuously remind the voters over the next couple of weeks that they have a responsibility and you can do the same everywhere.”

The 80-odd participants who took part in the cycle rally covered a distance of over eight km, during the course of which they spread awareness on the importance of registering in the voters’ list.

The campaign hopes to conduct a registration drive and the awareness campaign, with the help of a number of cycling groups and IT professionals to achieve an ambitious target of 25,000 registrations and to reach out to over one lakh voters. 

“When the rest of the State polled over 70 per cent in the Assembly elections, we Bangaloreans recorded only 52 per cent. But, we hope to make Bangaloreans shed the image of being a low-polling city in 2014. That is the reason why we have coined the slogan, ‘I will vote, my friends will vote’, to tell fellow citizens that it is a collective effort to improve the polling percentage,” said Vijay Grover, founder, Pledge2Vote.

The event concluded with Kamal Pant, Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), distributing certificates.