As the Lok Sabha election is being conducted in several phases across India, all eyes are on the 8.4 crore first-time voters, who will be exercising their democratic right.
#VoteDaalo is a campaign kicked off by Mumbai resident Vinay Maurya, already known for his ongoing viral campaign #HelmetDaalo. As the Lok Sabha election is being conducted in several phases across India, all eyes are on the 8.4 crore first-time voters, who will be exercising their democratic right. His journey started on Good Friday and ended five days after it.
On his Instagram handle @TheIndianMotorcyclist, Maurya conducted polls after the first phase to understand the mood of young voters in which over 300 people participated in less than 12 hours. The poll results showed that 47 per cent of the participants are in the age group of 18-22 and 23 per cent of the participants said they won't be voting in these elections for various reasons. In order to encourage and motivate these first-time voters, Maurya decided to embark on a challenging motorcycle journey from Gateway of India in Mumbai to India Gate in Delhi and back to the Gateway of India.
In 106 hours, he clocked a record of 3,226 kilometre covering five states and a Union territory. In five days, the journey went across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi. Pledge to Vote stickers were designed and distributed to people in Mumbai, Vapi, Surat, Bharuch, Baroda, Modasa, Udaipur, Ajmer, Jaipur, Gurgaon, New Delhi, Kota, Ujjain, Indore, Dhule, Nashik, and Thane.
"It was one of the toughest expedition that I had taken. The idea of this journey was to not waste time and quickly meet as many people as I could before the next phases. The third phase of elections was just approaching and I wanted to spread the word faster because every vote matters in a democracy. What I also realized during the journey that not many kids know about the election system and the process behind it. It is probably because the parliamentary procedure was taught in early secondary school and many have forgotten even the number of seats in Lok Sabha. I will be writing a request to various Universities in India to conduct a session on the electoral process to refresh the memory of kids to make informed voting decisions," he said.
Maurya further added, "The response to the campaign was mostly positive and there was no negative perception apart from a few small villages. The campaign is completely unbiased and is not for or against any political party or personality."
Such expeditions are not recommended unless you are an experienced rider. It was purely because of learned meditation exercises that Maurya was able to complete this journey.
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