Shivamogga: “In the second phase of 14 Lok Sabha constituencies polling, the district has recorded highest polling. This is because of the collective efforts of all those who were involved in the election duty”, said Deputy Commissioner K A Dayanand, here on Thursday, April 25.
He spoke about this in the thanks giving programme organized in the press club.
He said, “Every success story will be having bitter experiences in its journey. Likewise, these experiences have helped us achieve this milestone this time.”
“We always think of a political party and its candidate winning the elections, but we fail to understand our responsibility of exercising our rights. This time around, SVEEP Committee had taken special interest and had created a lot of awareness on voting rights”, he added.
Speaking about the electoral awareness programme he said, “We had a lot of students who had cooperated and involved with us during the awareness programme. This has helped them understand their responsibility. While taking the same awareness programme to the doorsteps of the people, we understood the ground reality and helped us in molding our programme, accordingly.”
“The students were completely involved in the awareness programme from 9 AM to 9 PM”, he added.
Explaining about the ground realities Dayanand said, “When our students went to the doorsteps and requested voters to exercise their rights, the common question that they heard was why do they have to vote and for what sake.”
He said that he had answered to one of the queries of a voter and said, “The reason why you need to exercise your rights is because you have two options, either you press the None of the Above (NOTA) button if you don’t like anyone, or press any one button where you think there is an able candidate.”
“Our intention was to help people not miss the opportunity of voting and the same principle was followed by the students, who had joined us”, he added.
On the election model code of conduct process he said, “Even though the elections are over, the model code of conduct will continue till the counting day, but will involve slight changes. Leniency will be given to all the political parties to organize conventions and government programmes. Except emergency initiatives nothing else can be implemented.”
President of Press Club Manjunath was present.
