India Against Corruption (IAC), the umbrella organisation of various NGOs, led by veteran Gandhian Anna Hazare, has decided to hold a voters’ awareness drive ahead of the civic polls in the city.
Starting from February 10, the two-day drive will see IAC volunteers urging the citizens to go out and vote in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) election on February 16.
Deepak Bharadia, an IAC member, said that IAC would try to increase the voting percentage in the civic polls.
“In a democracy, voting is the fundamental duty of the citizens, and we would urge them to exercise this right. In case, they do not like any of the candidates in the fray, we would urge them to use the ‘No-Vote’ option under section 49-0,” he said.
Team Anna, which includes Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal and top cop Kiran Bedi among others, recently undertook a similar exercise in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and four other states going to the polls.
Another IAC volunteer, Sandeep Khardekar, said that they would urge the people to vote for clean candidates.
“We will conduct similar drives in slums and urge the people to ensure that they vote for the good candidates, and do not fall prey to incentives by candidates,” he said.
When questioned about the delay in undertaking the drive, both Khardekar and Bharadia said, “We are doing this in order to get the maximum effect. We are organising this drive at the 11th hour to get maximum mileage.”
