Grand football tournaments at Panchayat level were organized at all the six blocks of Koderma district on Sunday. The tournament was conducted on the direction of district electoral officer for voter awareness campaign under SVEEP programme.
Block development officer, Mithilesh Kumar Chaudhary, who was present at a few matches said, "village level teams were formed and a match was organized. The winning teams will now particiapte in the block level tournament to be held on April 14."
The BDO gave detailed information about EVM, Election Management Koderma App and cVigil App to the participants in the tournament.
Deputy Commissioner of Koderma, Bhuvnesh Pratap Singh said that the sport is being used to attract young people in the district to cast their vote. “People in Koderma love football. This is the reason that we decided to reach out to them using this sport,” he said.
Apart from football, many more initiatives are being taken by the administration to encourage people to vote in the upcoming Lok Sabha election which is to be held in Koderma on May 6.
The district administration has started using stickers sporting slogans related to voters’ awareness at various products like sweet boxes, shopping bags and also liquor bottles in the city. Stickers have already been pasted over 25,000 liquor bottles. Also, the administration has distributed these stickers to the courier companies for them to post it on the various packages being delivered.
A jingle has also been prepared and given at the local railway station to be played at regular intervals to encourage people to cast their vote.
Also a marathon is planned on either April 17 or 19, for the awareness.
One of the biggest steps taken by the administration is launching the Election Management App which has already been downloaded by 10,000 people.
The app will help people get details about their booths and cross check whether their name is on the voters’ list or not.
Also, a number of competitions like rangoli making and selfie competitions are organized by the administration in which the participants have to upload the photos on the app and the winners are awarded.
District public relations officer of Koderma informed that till date more than 1500 people have already uploaded their selfie with voter IDs on the app.
The app also includes the contact number of block level officers if a voter needs to contact them.