In the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly elections, Surat's Agrawal Vikas Trust's 'Yuva Team' has undertaken the task of persuading voters in the age group of 18 to 30 years to vote by creating awareness through Street Plays, Rock Band and Kavi Sammelan.
The Yuva Team has 400 youngsters, which has further divided into several smaller groups to focus on young and first time voters.
Talking to ANI, Rahul Agrawal, the vice-president of 'Yuva Team' said "The Election Commission's website shows that the age group of 18 to 30 years has a poor turnout in elections of Gujarat and hence we thought an initiative should be taken from our side."
Agrawal adds that, "Surat is a big city having 12 assembly seats, so we have focused only five assembly seats i.e Majura, Chauryassi, Limbayat, Udhna and Surat East."
The Yuva Team works under a program titled 'Vote Karega Yuva'.
"There are 154 societies in these areas and we make sure that our member, who is also a local resident with no political affiliation, goes to the young voters and persuade them for voting in polls," he added.
Mayank Jindal, who has been assigned the Nest View society of Majura assembly, said the data of voters on EC's website helps them to prepare an Excel sheet to focus on the young voters.
"While we prepared the entire list, we found almost 80,000 new voters have been registered. We have been able to meet almost 5,000 families in which there are numerous young voters," Jindal said.
Asked if political parties contesting the elections approached them, Kapish Khatuwala, the spokesperson of team, said the team had no political affiliations.
"We never tell the voters, whom they should vote, we want them to vote, be it NOTA but they must vote. We never call any political person in our programs, otherwise it would ruin the purpose of our program," he said.
Khatuwala said the feedback from young voters vindicated that they don't have much interest in voting.
"Our motive is to bring them to polling booth, we want the youth to celebrate the day of polling as a 'Holy Day', unfortunately today many of us celebrate it as Holiday," he added.
The high decibel poll campaigning for the first phase has concluded and Gujarat goes for polls tomorrow.
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