New Delhi, Nov 2 (IANS): The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday signed an MoU with Ministry of Education to integrate voter education and electoral literacy into the curricular framework, starting from classes 6 to 12 in all schools across the country.

The MoU underscores the development of an institutional framework that seeks to incorporate electoral literacy formally into the school and college education system.

This includes structured curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities, all of which will help in preparing future and new voters for greater electoral participation and in effect strengthening democracy.

It’s crucial to capture the attention of young minds and educate them about the significance and value of their vote in every election.

This move by ECI will help them to ‘catch them young’ and prepare students in schools for their first vote and ingrain democratic values and ethos in them at a formative age.

Under the MoU, 'Democracy Room' will be introduced in senior secondary schools for display of voter education materials and activities

The NCERT will include content on electoral literacy in school textbooks and State Education Boards will be advised to follow suit.

Despite successfully managing and conducting of elections by the Election Commission over the years in fair and peaceful way along with a high jump in participation of the electors, there is also a concern that there were almost 297 million electors (out of 910 million), did not cast their votes in General Election to Lok Sabha - 2019.

The voting percentage was 67.4 per cent, which the Commission has taken as a challenge to improve upon.

This significant collaboration aims to empower young people by bridging the knowledge gap among the youth and first-time voters.