Karnataka Minister for Revenue Krishna Byre Gowda and Indian Youth Congress General Secretary M.S. Raksha Ramaiah launched the ‘Pehla Vote’ (first vote) campaign on August 11. Pehla Vote is a nationwide initiative by Indian Youth Congress to attract first-time enthusiastic voters in the age group 18 to 23, as the party prepares for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
With young and first-time voters emerging as a crucial constituency for all national parties, the pehla vote aims at increasing the vote share in this cohort for the Congress party through interactive and tech-driven campaigns. The campaign will involve QR code for registration. The QR code will be mounted on trucks, which will travel across Karnataka and visit hotspots, such as colleges, tuition hubs, bus stations and malls, which see a higher footfall of young voters.
India has 17.5 crore persons in the 18 to 25 age bracket, constituting a formidable chunk of voters. In 2019, BJP had managed to gain 41% of votes in this cohort as compared to 24% by the Congress.
Congress aims to reverse this trend with the Pehla Vote campaign, which will be spearheaded by Raksha Ramaiah, a former president of the Karnataka unit of the Indian Youth Congress. He has been entrusted with this responsibility after successfully leading the Yuva Matha (youth voter) campaign during the Karnataka Assembly polls in May 2023.
The Yuva Matha campaign is believed to have helped the Congress get the backing of 42% of first-time voters as compared to 40% for the BJP. This was the first time that Congress managed to get more votes than BJP in any election since 2019.
Following the success of the Yuva Matha campaign, IYC proposed to ramp up Yuva Matha as a nationwide campaign called ‘Pehla Vote’.
