AP High Court asks Election Commission about voter education

By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad, March 30 :A division bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court comprising Justice V. Eswaraiah and Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar on Monday expressed dissatisfaction over the Election Commission for not taking steps to educate voters.
Justice Eswaraiah said: “We are observing the election campaigns of the various political parties in the media explaining their policies and programmes, but we did not find a single advertisement or video clip issued by the EC to educate the voters.”
The judge asked the counsel for the EC, Mr S.Niranjan Reddy, “Don’t we need good governance and leaders. Who else would educate the voters except the EC? Lack of awareness on the value of vote is the root cause for the sorry state of affairs of the present political system.”
Dealing with a petition filed by Dr G. Harikishan Goud, president of the Society for Social Awareness, the court directed the EC to file an affidavit before Wednesday explaining what steps it has initiated to create awareness among the voters so far.
He said that the voters would fall into traps laid by political parties due lack of awareness of the vote value.