It’s election season in Karnataka and while parties are going all out to ensure that constituents actually come out on the day of polling to exercise their voting right, one activist has come up with a unique idea to urge people to vote.
Siddappa Doddachikkannanavar from Hangal is set to get married to Jyoti, who hails from Ranebennuru, on April 27. With the Assembly polls scheduled to be held just a few weeks after the wedding, the activist saw an opportunity to spread awareness about voting and came up with the idea of designing his wedding invitation card to look like a voter ID card.
The state president of the Kannada Srujanasheela Balaga, an organisation that promotes the language, and an employee with the Indian Railways in Goa, Siddappa said that wanted to do something to promote Kannada.
“I wanted to do something unique for my wedding to promote Kannada. When I discussed the same with my friend Karibasappa Gondi, a constable, he suggested that we should do something to encourage voting keeping in mind the Assembly elections. With the support of my friend Channabasappa, we designed a wedding card which resembles the voting ID card,” he told Mirror.
The unusual invitation card has the national emblem instead of the logo of the Election Commission on top and even has a unique code ‘SJMRG27042018’, which is a combination of Siddappa and his fiancée’s initials along with the date of the wedding.
Using the same font as a regular voter ID card, one side of the invitation card contains the name of the bride and the groom, the date and venue of the wedding and a picture of the couple. The other side asks family and friends invited to the wedding to vote responsibly.
According to Eenadu, the wedding card reads ‘Your vote is valuable’.
The voter ID invitation card also talks about the importance of blood donation and asks guests not to “sell their votes”, the Mirror said.
The couple reportedly took the effort and got prior permission from the District Collector in order to print their wedding invite in the form of a voter ID card.