Assembly Elections 2018: In Rajasthan, children to push parents to cast their votes

It's been a time-tested strategy of advertising agencies to use kids to market products, riding on the soft spot that parents have for their young ones. The highly successful formula will now be put to a different social experiment in Rajasthan.

Ahead of the December 7 assembly polls, the State Election Department has decided to rope in schoolchildren to motivate older family members to cast their vote with the aim of improving voter turnout.

Under the initiative, nearly 1.5 crore students of private and government schools across the state will be asked to coax their parents and relatives to pledge that they would head for the voting booth on the poll day.

The state's voter turn in the 2013 elections stood at 75.04 per cent.

Students of Classes 6 to 12 in over a lakh schools will be handed out Sankalp Patras (resolution letters), said the Election Department.

Each Sankalp Patra features a column for the name and voter ID of parents and other members of the family. Parents are required to sign the document after filling in their details. All schools have been directed to send a daily report on the efforts to the election and education departments.

Article Type:

Sections:

Authors:

Agencies:

Cities:

Tags: