President Ram Nath Kovind virtually inaugurates the event
New Delhi, Jan 25: The Election Commission of India (ECI) celebrated the 11th National Voters Day (NVD) on 25th January 2021.
The National Voters Day was first celebrated on 25th January 2011, to commemorate the foundation date of the Election Commission of India. The ECI was founded on 25th January 1950.
The chief guest of the event, President Ram Nath Kovind, inaugurated the event from Rashtrapati Bhavan. The theme for this year’s NVD is ‘Making Our Voters Empowered, Vigilant, Safe, and Informed’. The main purpose of observing NVD is to ensure, encourage, and facilitate maximum voter enrollment for the world’s biggest democracy.
The Chief Election Commissioner, Mr. Sunil Arora announced that the ECI in collaboration with IIT Madras are working on ‘Remote Voting Project’ which will ensure ‘Remote Voting’ from anywhere in India. The mock trials for the project will start soon and after the successful completion of the project – people will not have to travel to their hometown to cast their vote.
The Honourable President of India, Ram Nath Kovind awarded National Awards for the best electoral practices to District and State level officers for their outstanding work in various fields involved in conducting elections. The President also launched ‘Radio Hello Voters’ at NVD. It is a 24X7 online radio service that will stream information on the electoral process through songs, drama, discussions, podcasts, parodies, etc. in regional languages as well as in Hindi and English.
ECI formally launched e-EPIC initiative on NVD. The Electronic Electoral Photo Identity Card is a secure, non-editable pdf version of the EPIC and will have a QR code with voter’s image. It can be downloaded on mobiles or computers. The programme will be launched in 2 phases – The first phase begins from Jan 25th to Jan 31st. All new voters who have applied for the voter ID and registered their mobile numbers in Form-6 will be able to download the pdf. The next phase will start from Feb 1st and will be open to all voters. e-EPIC can be downloaded by clicking on the following links: https://voterportal.eci.gov.in/ and https://nvsp.in/.
