Lucknow: After raising concerns over what it calls ‘Vote Chori’, or vote theft, the Congress party has launched a ‘Vote Rakshak’ campaign aimed at equipping its cadre to detect and report irregularities in voter lists.
As part of the initiative to counter alleged manipulation of electoral rolls, the Congress has shortlisted five Lok Sabha constituencies where it lost by narrow margins: Jaipur Rural and Alwar (Rajasthan), Kanker (Chhattisgarh), Morena (Madhya Pradesh) and Basgaon (Uttar Pradesh).
In these constituencies, one Vote Rakshak will be deployed for every 20 polling booths, translating to approximately 15-20 volunteers per assembly segment, and nearly 100 in each Lok Sabha seat.
Their task will be to monitor the electoral rolls and, in case of irregularities such as wrongful additions or deletions, immediately approach the Election Commission.
The team has already covered three of the five identified constituencies, where the Congress candidate was also present during the Vote Rakshak identification and training sessions.
A senior party functionary, who is a part of the Vote Rakshak Programme, said the decision to focus on these five Lok Sabha seats was intended to send out a message that the Congress might have won them had booth rakshaks been in place earlier, while also sensitising the local cadre.
The initiative is being treated as a pilot project as the victory margin in these constituencies was under 10,000 votes. After this, the party plans to expand the campaign to five more seats where the margin was below 20,000.
“Since voter lists are updated almost every one or two years during local body or assembly polls or some kind of elections, we want to build awareness from now itself, as the issue has gained urgency,” the functionary added.
To identify and train Vote Rakshaks, the Congress has constituted a team of nearly a dozen leaders. While not prominent figures, these leaders have experience in party training, surveys and handling electoral rolls.
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Who are Vote Rakshaks?
According to a Congress functionary, Vote Rakshaks are volunteers tasked with preventing vote theft. In one of the training presentations, their role is outlined as party workers who are not only part of the organisation but are also trained to scrutinise voter lists, make effective use of electoral forms and raise objections over irregularities in the rolls.
These Rakshaks could be a part of the local district unit. They will not receive any payment, but will be supervised by senior functionaries of the state unit. Many of them will also get the opportunity to meet top leaders at the All India Congress Committee.
The Print has learnt that during training visits, workers are taken through four presentations—what vote chori is, how to stop vote chori, the use of official documents, and the Vote Rakshak campaign.
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Documents accessed by The Print mentioned the details of these sessions. The first presentation explains how vote theft occurs across the country, citing examples such as duplicate entries, multiple voters at the same address and bogus voting. The second focuses on preventive measures like heightened vigilance and annual cross-checking of voter rolls.
The third focuses on the use of Form 6 (for inclusion of names), Form 7 (for deletions or objections) and Form 8 (for corrections). The final presentation defines the role of Vote Rakshaks: volunteers who, besides being part of the party, are trained to monitor voter lists, effectively use these forms, and raise queries over irregularities in the electoral rolls.
A local leader in Madhya Pradesh, who attended the training, said, “It seemed like they were identifying booth workers, but in a different way. It is somewhat similar to the panna pramukh concept introduced by the BJP, which also created a buzz among their party cadre.”
Priyanka Gandhi’s monitoring
While Rahul Gandhi is the face of the campaign, party insiders said that Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi is closely monitoring the programme. She is learnt to have finalised the list of trainers and given feedback to Rahul Gandhi.
The core training team includes Anil Yadav, Pradeep Narwal and Mazin Husain from Uttar Pradesh, among nearly a dozen coordinators involved. Both Anil and Narwal are considered group members of Team Priyanka. Mazin, an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, has also been involved in training programmes in Uttar Pradesh.
Congress insiders told ThePrint that a senior functionary from Rahul Gandhi’s team has been tasked with monitoring inputs provided by the trainers. Rahul is expected to address the Vote Rakshaks this year.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Congress MP said, “It is a good initiative on paper, but scaling it across all 545 Lok Sabha seats will not be easy. In Congress, candidates often rely on their own core teams for booth management, and whether these teams will heed the Vote Rakshaks remains to be seen.”
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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