SUJIT CHAKRABORTY
Music is synonymous with the mountainous state of Meghalaya and keeping this in mind, efforts are being made to effectively motivate the voters through music so that they exercise their franchise, leading to a high turnout in the February 27 election to the 60-member state Assembly.
The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Meghalaya F.R. Kharkongor has taken a personal initiative to inspire the 21,75,000 strong electorates spread across 3,482 polling stations in all 12 districts. With just 7 days to go for the poll on February 27, the CEO is actively leveraging music to urge voters to come to their nearest polling stations on the polling day and to choose, cast and celebrate their franchise, an election official told IANS.
He said: “The CEO in a message to the electorates said that to love your state, love your voice and love your vote, cast vote… as your right is your might, your voice is your choice.”
“Light After Dark”, which is the state’s first all visually impaired music band and the state’s ‘Disability Icon’, champions the cause of electoral participation amongst physically challenged voters to ensure that “no voter is left behind”.
Meghalaya’s election icons — leading musical band ‘Summersalt’ and assorted leading artists from both Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills regions are musically enthusing and urging all voters to “Vote for sure ” on February 27 through the foot tapping music video anchored by the office of the Meghalaya CEO.
All efforts are being taken to ensure that home voting by 80 plus senior citizens and physically challenged voters, facilitated by polling teams who are trekking across arduous terrain to arrange for smooth voting by these two categories transcending queues.
The election official said that through “Mission 300” campaign, five polling stations across 60 assembly constituencies have been identified in a bid to improve voting turnout this time, so that it touches 90 per cent over and above the 86.9 per cent voting turnout recorded in the 2018 Assembly elections, which compared to other states in the country is fairly robust.
Kharkongor also decided to give medals and certificates to the five first-time voters (18 plus), and five first voters in each polling station in Meghalaya, to encourage voters to exercise their franchise in a festive manner.
He said that for the past many years, women voters outnumbered their male counterparts in the electoral list, and in the previous elections, the turnout of female electorates was higher than the male voters.
Of the total of 21,61,729 voters, the number of male voters in the state is 10,68,801 and that of female voters is 10,92,326.
“We have organised ‘My vote My Valentine’ on February 14 in 300 polling stations where the turnout was previously slightly less,” Kharkongor said.
He said that 120 all women-managed polling stations would be set up across the state.
In all, 375 candidates including 36 women are in the fray for the February 27 Meghalaya Assembly polls.
Compared to the last assembly polls in 2018, 78 more candidates are contesting the poll this time.
The counting of votes will take place on March 2.
(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)
