GOT inked? Mogambo khush hua. India\'s voter awareness campaign gets some swag

GOT inked? Mogambo khush hua. India's voter awareness campaign gets some swag

Getting out the vote in a seven-phase Lok Sabha election can be a daunting task, but the people tasked with doing that seem to be having plenty of social media fun while they're at it. Are your meme-designing skills better than the Election Commission's? Read on to find out.

Chennai
April 22, 2019
UPDATED: April 22, 2019 10:58 IST
The Election Commission and the Press Information Bureau are getting really creative. (Photo (L): Twitter/@ECISVEEP)

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Five more phases of Lok Sabha election left
  • Official government accounts get creative to get out the vote
  • Game of Thrones stars, but there are plenty of other themes too

India's mammoth general election and the final season of Game of Thrones kicked off just days within each other. Someone saw an opportunity.

The styled O in "GOT Inked", a social media campaign asking for selfies of inked fingers, is a clear shout-out to the wildly popular HBO series. Despite the scale and difficulty of their task, it seems, poll officials are in the mood to have a bit of fun. After all, Sunil Arora, the chief election commissioner, promised a "festive" election.

Memes prodding voters to head to the polls are populating the Twitterverse -- a refreshing distraction from the daily tedium of political mudslinging. Here is one from the Press Information Bureau. Full marks for including the soaring dragon, wouldn't you say?

If you haven't watched Game of Thrones yet ("Gasp!"), do not despair -- it is far from being the solitary theme. Voters in Tamil Nadu, for instance, were treated to memes inspired by everything from the Chennai Super Kings to the black hole whose photograph captivated the world this month. (But sure, yes, there was also a GOT meme.)

Turnout in the first two phases of the ongoing general election fell short of 70 per cent; the final numbers were 69.45 per cent in the first phase, and and 69.43 in the second. With five more polling days left, er...Mogambo may expect better.

Of course, there's more to the world's largest election than Bollywood humour. The sheer scale of the exercise is mind-boggling: 1 million polling stations, and a corpus of eligible voters -- around 900 million -- almost as large as the combined population of Europe and Brazil. There are also the fierce political battles, which revolve around different players and issues in different states, but also feature overarching themes like unemployment and national security.

With most of the election still ahead of us, there's only one thing left to be said here: Go vote!

Inputs from Reuters

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the final turnout in Phase Two was 69.17 per cent. It was 69.43 per cent.

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Posted byGanesh Kumar