Mysuru: Sanjiv Kumar, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) for Karnataka, inaugurated a workshop for the surveyors on ‘Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP)’ related to election process among electorates of Karnataka,’ at Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement (GRAAM) in Hebbal, here recently.

This study commissioned by the Election Commission of Karnataka, is being conducted by GRAAM in association with Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC).

This survey will probe knowledge and awareness of electors regarding overall election process and identify key influencers on issues related to voting. It reveals attitude involving belief and perception of electors at present.

The study is conducted under the flagship programme of Election Commission Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) with the prime agenda  of ‘no voters are left behind’.

Sanjiv Kumar, in his inaugural address, explained about the importance of KAP study.  “This is the first time such a large scale survey is being conducted by the Commission to understand the problems related to poll, identify the excluded groups from casting vote, factors that stop people from voting etc., will help to augment the effectiveness of the election process,” he said.

He urged the data collectors to conduct the survey with utmost integrity as the genuine and authentic data collected from the field will help to improve the election process, and surveyors play an important role.

GRAAM Founder-Chairman Dr. R. Balasubramaniam emphasised the need to make citizens understand their responsibility to cast votes and elect right candidates, which would result in development of the region. Hence, development is in the hands of people itself.

The data collection process should also aim to create awareness among people about election process, he said and expressed hope to see positive change in the near future as the Election Commission itself is involved in making the election process much equitable and transparent.

GRAAM Executive Director R. Basavaraju, commending the conduct of such a survey, said that Constitution gives the right to vote to all the eligible citizens and we are still not completely exercising that right.

If democracy has to be strengthened, all the citizens must be part of the democratic process and cast their votes without any fear or bias, he said.

This survey would enable the Commission to get the prevalent challenges, issues for the people to cast their vote.

As a follow up action, the Commission will come out with the Action Plan to encourage more people to participate in the voting, he said.

Prof. S. Madheswaran, Head of Centre for Economic Studies and Policy, ISEC, is the study Director. Dr. B. P. Vani, Assistant Professor, ISEC and others participated in the workshop.

Participants from Kolar, Ballari, Dharwad, Tumakuru, Mandya, Bengaluru, Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Shivamogga and Hassan to attend the training on data collection.