Empower, a civic society group based in TN, is using a rule from 1961 to ask more voters to go to the election booth, even if they just want to reject all candidates.

Oh podu was a hit Tamil film song a few years ago. Today, it is also a voting movement that gives you a choice – vote or register your displeasure over the choice of candidates under a constitutional provision.

“Voting is both the right and duty of the people. Another objective of our movement is to make people aware of their constitutional right to cast their vote under section 49 ‘O’. On an average, in every election, nearly 45 per cent of the eligible voters don’t vote at all. Even if a winning candidate bags 30 per cent of the polled votes, it amounts to getting the support of only about 16 per cent of the electorate.

If more and more non-voters begin to exercise their vote, the result of many elections would drastically change,” pointed out by Mr. A. Sankar, President, Tuticorin District Consumer Rights and Environment Protection Association and Executive Director, EMPOWER who is the Organiser of Voters Awareness Movement!

Since most non-voters blame their inability to accept any candidate and don’t want to vote for any of the contesting candidates the organisation urges such people to use their legal right to reject all the candidates.

Section 49 ‘O’ of the election rules 1961 has conferred the right to the voter to inform the booth officer, after the indelible ink mark has been marked, that the voter does not want to vote for any of the candidates.

The section requires the booth officer to record the voter’s choice of 49 ‘O’.
The organisation has urged the election commission to give a separate button on the EVM for this purpose. The booth officers should also be educated about this legal facility available to the voters, Sankar said.

Members of Voters Awareness Movement!-Oh podu distributed pamphlets at Rajaji Park, Chidambara Nagar and would be expanding their awareness campaign to other places of the district as well.

forwarded by A.Sankar, Executive Director, EMPOWER Mobile: 094431 48599

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