With the announcement of poll dates, the Election Commission of India is working towards improving the voter turnout percentage to over 75 with a series of awareness programmes planned.
While former Indian captain and current Under-19 coach Rahul Dravid has been roped in as brand ambassador, film director Yogaraj Bhat will be coming up with a Karnataka election anthem-2018 in the next one week.
“Awareness about the importance of electoral participation is being created among voters through systematic voter education and electoral participation (SVEEP) and it is expected that the voter turnout will exceed 75%,” Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar told presspersons here on Tuesday.
Incidentally, the voter turnout during the 2013 Assembly elections was 71.45% with just about 50% urban voters exercising their franchise. “Total voters, including service voters in the final roll, has been 4.96 crore, which is 9% increase over the total number voters in 2013,” he said.
Of the 4.96 crore voters, male voters are 2.52 crore and female voters are 2.44 crore. The number of transgender voters has increased to 4,552 from 2,100 in 2013. “To increase urban voting percentage, SVEEP activities will be taken up. Similarly, extensive activities will be taken up to to improve women participation,” he said.
Among the measures to improve voting include establishment of about 450 all-woman polling booth across the State. “Four all-woman polling booth will be established in each of the urban constituencies, and one in each of the rural constituencies,” he said. For the first time, a queue status finding system is being introduced in polling booths where the number of voters are 1,400.
