votersNew Delhi, Oct 13 (PTI) Two city-based school girls havedecided to make migrant labourers working in the areasurrounding the school aware of their rights as an Indiancitizen, by enrolling them as voters.
Yet to become eligible to vote themselves, Noor Takkarand Siya Malhotra from The British School here, have started acampaign 'My Vote My Voice' to educate over 125 migrantworkers and their families about their voting rights.
The girls have successfully helped at least 60 workers inobtaining their voter identity cards under the campaign thathas been running for two years now.
The idea for the initiative, Noor said, germinatedafter they attended a week-long workshop that required them toteach children living in the slums opposite their school.
"When I met the children and talked to them, I saw howtruly appreciative they were of the opportunity they weregetting. I realised that these children were just like me:enthusiastic, loud and innocent," the class 12 student said.
Soon enough, the girls realised that illiteracy andpoverty were part of a vicious cycle that was driven bypolitics, therefore, making it important for every citizen tobe aware of their right to vote.
"The prevailing opinion was that government officials,for decades, have favoured their political careers over theinterests of the people, resulting in widespread andsystematic inequality," she said.
"This made me realise that the system is broken, and theonly way to fix it is to make the politicians recognise theneeds of these families through the exercise of the mostfundamental political institution in any democracy – voting,"she added.
As part of the campaign, the girls not only educated theworkers about the importance of voting, but also enlightenedthem about the procedure of registration -- how to fill up theform, getting together the required documents as well asassisting them in taking photographs.
"The workers' responses to the awareness program andvoter registration drives has been overwhelming," Noor said.
However, the journey was not easy -- many migrantsalready had voter id cards with the addresses of their nativevillages, getting them to skip a day's work to get all thedocumentation done et all.
"Despite having motivated and encouraged themcontinuously, some of them did not bother to cancel theirolder voter ids," she said.
The girls now hope to rope in students from other schoolsin the city to expand the reach of the campaign.
"We have decided to include students from other schoolsto volunteer in the next voter registration drives. We arealso planning to hold drives in Mumbai and South Delhi.
"Later on, we might try to cover other areas wheremigrant workers are in substantial numbers," she said.
Noor and Siya saw major sponsors for their campaign intheir fellow students. PTI NKS TRSTRS.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.