বাংলায় পড়ুন
Looking at the historical low turnout at Kolkata Uttar constituency, the District Election Officer (DEO) of Kolkata Uttar constituency Dibyendu Sarkar said that a number of new initiatives will be taken to bring in people to the polling booths in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. One of those will be resorting to ‘Ek Dojon Goppo’ or a dozen of stories told through short videos.
The Kolkata Uttar Lok Sabha constituency comprises seven assembly constituencies (ACs) of which, two – Chowringhee and Shyampukur – are located at the Central Business District (CBD) of the Kolkata where there is a lot of floating voters. Thus turnout at these two ACs is particularly low.
Sarkar said talking to media persons on Monday.
Part of the Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) campaign, the commission would prepare 12 films of about one-minute duration each.
All of those will have a flavor of north Kolkata. For example, in one of those, there will be a person in front of a book store with College Street at the backdrop, which is one of the integral part of north Kolkata. There he would be talking about casting his votes with booksellers joining him. In another one, immortal ‘Charmurti’ characters of author Narayan Gangopadhyay will be seen in an adda session at a typical north Kolkata courtyard as they did in the story and they would talk about the polls and why people should cast their votes.
Sarkar added and added that that concept and the script was that of the commission.
A videographer and some theatre artists would be hired for the purpose. Of the total 1862 polling booths in the Kolkata Uttar constituency, 153 will be all-women booths. One of the 12 films will feature that as well. Then there will be one for first-time voters. In Kolkata Uttar parliamentary constituency, there are 14,781 first-time voters which is 1.03 percent of the total electors.
One of the problem areas of this constituency had been that polling booths which are situated on first floor and electors, especially the older ones have trouble in climbing up the stairs. Sarkar said that of the total booths, 750 are not located on the ground floor.
He said,
The number is one of the highest in the entire state but there are constraints owing to which it cannot be rectified.
