One million New Votes

“You are crucial in the making of this city, B.PAC is always there to help you”, said Revathy Ashok, CEO, B.PAC in an interaction with the audience at the launch of B.PAC’s One Million New Votes Campaign in Freedom Park, Bangalore on February 13th, 2014.

The campaign aimed at a massive increase in registering young people in the voter rolls for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. It was carried out in the form of a contest that had students from several colleges of the city running innovative campaigns to get the maximum number of voter registrations within a set time limit.

Many college students were present at the inauguration of the month-long voter enrolment initiative where 31 city-based colleges registered. 10 volunteers chosen in each college organised voter’ registration drives with inputs from Pledge2Vote and Smart Vote while BBMP provided drop boxes in colleges for students to drop their completed voter registration forms.

Nooraine Faizal, Member B.PAC, opined, “We need youngsters to participate in politics to make it better.” Revathy Ashok added that B.PAC would release a list of preferred candidates for the general elections, like it did for the 2013 Assembly elections. A ‘drum jam’ by Roberto Narrain and singer Vasundhara Das further enthused students to participate in the campaign with drums and tambourines. “A lot of students eligible to vote have not registered. We aim to include them in the voters list,” said Vijay Grover of Pledge2Vote. 8000 voter applications were submitted as a result of this initiative.

This B.PAC programme was supported by Inventure Academy and done in partnership with CELL, NASSCOM, CII Young Indians, Smart Vote and Pledge2Vote.