Jaago Re! One Billion Votes,a voter registration initiative of Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy,Bangalore,in partnership with Tata Tea Ltd,has claimed huge success in Ahmedabad. Nearly 8,000 young voters in the city have registered through the website www.jaagore.com. Janaagraha had tied up with the Ahmedabad-based organisation,Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI),to help promote the initiative. Kanan Dhru,Founder,RFGI,while explaining the concept,said: It was targeted towards young urban voters in top 35 cities,Ahmedabad being one of them. It served three primary objectives: making youngsters aware of their voting duties; making available the mandatory Form 8 for voter registration; and providing the location of the nearest Electoral Registration (ER) office where all the necessary documents for registration were to be submitted. A state-of-the-art mapping software was used to locate the nearest ER office,where potential voters submitted a duly filled Form 8 (available on the website),along with an address proof and two passport-sized photographs. The website also provided contact details of all the ER office personnel in these 35 cities. An offline registration drive was also carried out. With the help of 10 college volunteers,RFGI visited 8 major colleges in the city and distributed voter registration forms to the students. Various other organisations like Yuva and Karuna Care Foundation also helped RFGI in this endeavour, added Kanan. The campaign,which has been endorsed by the Election Commission of India,had an advisory board including N R Narayana Murthy (Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys),T S Krishnamurthy (former Chief Election Commissioner of India),Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (filmmaker) and Tariq Ansari (Managing Director,Mid-Day Multimedia).
