With elections round the corner the same familiar story starts to run over again --mud slinging politicians, rigged polls, bad civic amenities and disgruntled or indifferent citizens. This time around however the Express Youth Forum in collaboration with Janagraha hava launched the ‘I-Count’ movement, which will aim at getting students from city, based colleges to register for voting in the upcoming elections.

Explaining the concept further, Ankit Shah one of the members of the EYF says, “Our basic aim is to educate the youth of the colleges about the process of getting registered and voting. We accordingly have gone to most of the colleges in the city as well as in the PCMC area. On Wednesday we will be going to the campuses of COEP, MIT and Symbiosis (both at Viman Nagar and on Law College Road) where we will have an on the spot registration process.”

Sandeep Vernekar another member says, “For the process of getting registered the students need to bring in two passport size photographs, a copy of their age proof and their address proof. In case the students are from outside Pune they need to bring along their student declaration form too. The registration is open to everyone and not just to students from those colleges. Anyone who hasn’t registered as a voter can come and get registered.”

The members will be distributing pamphlets in colleges urging the youth there to take part in getting registered and also in voting. “As of now we have interacted with close to 6000 students we hope to garner in at least half of them on Wednesday for the registration,” adds Vernekar.