Each youth should cast vote: Navin Chawla

New Delhi, Aug 6 (IANS) More youths should come forward and cast their votes as ‘each vote counts’, former chief election commissioner (CEC) Navin Chawla said Friday.

‘Every single vote counts in an election. Many times a single vote can change the total election result, so more youngsters should come up and vote,’ he said while addressing students in a lecture session on ‘General Election, 2009’ at the Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Marking the importance of a single vote, he said Rajasthan Congress president C.P. Joshi lost by a single vote in December 2008 elections in the state.

Chawla said youngsters, apart from concentrating on college elections, should become brand ambassadors of election commission and report incidents like booth capturing.

‘When I was delivering a lecture in a law school in Orissa, one of the students asked there is only male and female option in registering why not for transgenders. Taking this idea the Election Commission of India in 2009 allowed eunuchs and transsexuals to register under the ‘others’ category, which empowered a million of transgenders to vote,’ he said.

‘Come up with new ideas and post it to me, if it’s out of the box I would definitely take it up with the election commission,’ Chawla assured and shared his email id with the students.