Ace TT player Manika Batra to attend National Voters' Day event in Delhi on Jan 25

Ace table tennis player and Commonwealth medallist Manika Batra will participate in a programme here on January 25 to raise awareness on voting ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, officials said.

Batra has been chosen as an ambassador by the office of the Delhi chief electoral officer (CEO) and the event marking National Voters' Day will also see hosting of street plays and felicitation of polling officials.

"She has been chosen to spread awareness on voting in Delhi ahead of the general election and on January 25, she will attend the event hosted on the campus of the CEO office," a senior official told PTI.

He said, a proposal has been sent to cricketer Rishabh Pant to have him on board as another brand ambassador for spreading awareness on voting in the capital city.

The CEO office Friday released the final electoral roll ahead of the 2019 general elections, which stands at 1,36,95,291, which is 0.87 per cent less than the total number of electors in the last electoral roll, 1,38,14,866, published on January 10, 2018.

However, the final electoral roll shows an increase of nearly 8 per cent from the total number of electors in the last Lok Sabha polls in 2014, officials said.

A campaign involving Batra will begin soon to promote voting, they said.

Seeking to promote awareness, the office of the Delhi CEO Tuesday had launched a Voter Awareness Forum (VAF), an informal forum for generating discussions and build awareness on the election process.

"We had recently launched an awareness programme on EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) and VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail), as part of which we have installed kiosks at various public places across Delhi. And, today this forum has been launched at 300 locations in the city, from state to district levels," Delhi CEO Ranbir Singh had said at the launch of the forum at the CEO Office here.

The CEO office is housed in the old building of St. Stephen's College at Kashmere Gate, and an election-themed museum is also located in it, which seeks to promote knowledge about the electoral process and its history in India.

"Nearly 15,000 people, including delegations from 15 countries, have visited the museum since its inception," the official said.

These countries include, Bangladesh, Egypt, Afghanistan, Russia, Germany, Japan and Nepal.

The first-of-its-kind Election Education Centre-cum-Museum, christened A Journey through Elections, is located on the first floor of the office, in the heritage building.

The museum, that chronicles the country's historical electoral journey with artefacts, documents, photographs and film exhibits drawn from rare archives, was thrown open to the public on October 18, 2016, and has attracted visitors from 110 institutions since then.

Endowed with 200-odd exhibits with 100-120 rare photographs, drawn from several archives, the museum was inaugurated by the then Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi, who had termed it as the "journey of the electoral democratic process of India".

Visitors can also see a rare Films Division documentary -- "The Great Experiment" -- chronicling the events during the historic first general elections of India.

Among the rare pre-Independence era exhibits are the electoral roll of 1923, correspondences between police and poll officials in 1934 elections and Mahatma Gandhi's visit to St Stephens College in 1915.