Mandya: Zilla panchayat chief executive officer KR Nandini Wednesday directed colleges across the district to intensify efforts to register eligible young voters and ensure no student is left out of the electoral rolls.Addressing a meeting of principals of govt, aided and private pre-university and degree colleges at Mandya University, organised under Election Commission of India’s SVEEP initiative to promote voter registration and electoral literacy, Nandini instructed college authorities to verify students’ ages and identify those who have attained 18 years.Colleges must ascertain whether eligible students are already registered as voters and help those yet to enrol submit Form-6 and complete the registration process, she said.Nandini directed every college to designate a lecturer as a nodal person to coordinate Electoral Literacy Club activities and voter registration drives. Colleges can invite booth-level officers (BLOs) to campuses for on-the-spot registration or coordinate with them to complete the process. Students may also be guided to submit Form-6 online.She said special drives were conducted across the state on Sept 19 and 20 and instructed colleges to ensure all eligible students are registered by Sept 30.Meanwhile, Nandini directed officials to take proactive measures to prevent drinking water shortages in rural areas and ensure supply is restored within 24 hours of receiving a complaint.Addressing a meeting at zilla panchayat on Tuesday, she instructed taluk panchayat executive officers (EOs) and assistant executive engineers (AEEs) of the rural drinking water and sanitation division to personally visit villages facing or likely to face water scarcity and assess the situation on the ground.Officials were asked to submit detailed ground-truth reports with GPS-tagged photographs of affected locations.Nandini also instructed officials to clear rental payments for private borewells already hired to meet drinking water requirements and submit reports on the payments.
