Social media key platform for making electoral process participative and inclusive

Social media today has become indispensable and is one of the key platforms for making the electoral process participative and inclusive, the chief electoral officer (CEO) of Delhi said on Friday.

Delhi CEO Ranbir Singh said this during a training session on use and importance of social media for senior officers associated with the electoral process, aiming to promote voter awareness and encourage the youth to enroll more as voters.

“Today social media has become indispensable, and is eclipsing even the mainstream media in its reach and content diversity. It has enabled people belonging to each section of the society to directly converse about issues affecting them and share suggestions,” Singh was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the CEO office.

Now, campaigns are not confined to just posters and banners. Social media campaigns are full of info-commercials, advertisements, blog posts, and lakhs of tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts which “create a much stronger and wider impact,” he added.

Keeping  the objective of ”No voter to be left behind” “we consider social media as a key platform for making the election process participative and inclusive”, Singh said.

Usage, importance and growth of different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Clubhouse were discussed and how it can ramp up the process of passing on the information to the target audience, the statement said.

Singh said that “a specific social media cell under the supervision of J L Gupta, Nodal Officer (Social Media), is assisting the chief electoral officer in strengthening process of voter awareness and electoral participation”.

“This social media cell aims to provide innovative solutions to spread voter awareness to a wide range of audience,” he said.

The CEO Office is committed to increase the youth enrolment as voters through its awareness drive on numerous platforms on social media, he added.

District Election Officers (DEOs), SDMs (election), electoral registration officers (EROs), assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs) and officers of the CEO (HQ), attended the session, officials said.

The CEO said that Electoral Literacy Clubs (ELCs) exist at schools, colleges and different workplaces to propagate voter awareness, and they too can leverage the power of social media.

“The aim is to further enhance the reach of the social media accounts of CEO, DEOs, EROs and ELCs. This can help in disseminating far and wide the desired voter awareness messages,” he added.

The motive behind this training was to impart interest, knowledge, skill and expertise amongst election officials at all levels for using social media to actualise the mission of the Election Commission of India that no voter should be left behind, Singh said.

“Today”s youth is tech-savvy and spends lot of their time on social media platforms. We should therefore interact with them where they spend their time and motivate them to become proud voters of our great democracy,” he added.

The CEO also exhorted all participants to be active on their official social media accounts, be consistent in creating and sharing interesting and informative voter awareness content, engage with other relevant social media accounts and posts, and expand the digital marketing footprint of the Election Commission for enhancing electoral awareness, registration and participation.

The special summary revision (SSR) of Delhi”s electoral roll with January 1, 2022, as the qualifying date will begin from November 1, the CEO had said on September 7.

During this SSR, any person who would be 18 years or more on or before January 1, 2022 will be eligible to enroll as a voter, officials said.

Delhi”s last electoral roll was published in January 2021, according to which the total number of eligible voters in the city had then stood at over 1.48 crore.

In keeping with the need for technology-driven advancement in the electoral process, Singh recently had directed district authorities to ensure that those booth level officers who cannot handle smartphones are replaced by tech-savvy personnel during revision of electoral rolls. PTI