After Kerala sowed seeds of ‘green elections’, Anandpur Sahib in Punjab to ‘cast a vote, plant a tree’ today

NEW DELHI: A novel concept of ‘cast a vote, plant a tree’ started five years ago during 2019 parliamentary elections in Alappuzha in Kerala at the behest of a local environmentalist has gained momentum with this time Meghalaya experimenting with it during the first phase of polling on April 19, and now Anandpur Sahib constituency in Punjab trying it out in the last phase on Saturday.
Under this concept, every polling booth in Anandpur Sahib Lok Sabha seat will distribute saplings to all first time voters, senior citizens and people with disability who can plant them wherever they like after casting their votes.
“The move will not only help the mission of green election but may also help in increasing voting percentage to an extent,” Heera Lal, general observer of the Anandpur Sahib constituency, told TOI. Anandpur Sahib, having 17.3 lakh voters, is one of the 13 constituencies of Punjab that will go to polls on Saturday.
Lal, special secretary, irrigation in Uttar Pradesh govt, said all necessary arrangements have been made and saplings of fruits, medicinal, herbal and ornamental plants have already been procured and kept in adequate numbers for distribution among voters at all 2,068 polling booths in the constituency during the polling.
The steps have been taken in sync with the Election Commission’s push for eco-friendly elections. Incidentally, the commission has also been consistently flagging the 2019 Kerala experiment on its social media platform saying how the move of fusing democracy with environmentalism, where voters planted trees after casting their votes, led to thriving greenery.
“We hope our efforts will serve as a model and more and more constituencies across the country will emulate it for any parliamentary and assembly elections in future,” said Lal. Police observer of the constituency Sandeep Gajanan Dewan and expenditure observer Shilpi Sinha along with other poll officials joined the move to make this a successful experiment in Punjab.
Under the ‘Green Election’ campaign, the poll observers have also been working and sensitising political parties and voters not to use single-use plastics in Anandpur Sahib constituency. They also undertook tree plantation drives at different polling stations in the past few days.
The concept of ‘cast a vote, plant a tree’, launched in Kerala by environmentalist Firoz Ahammed in 2019, got traction during the current general elections when Meghalaya poll officials distributed two saplings - one each to first male and female voters - to plant at polling stations on the day of election. The state has two Lok Sabha seats that went to poll on April 19.
Kerala’s experiment - ‘a tree in memory of your vote’, brainchild of Ahammed - had got momentum in the state assembly polls as well. Besides, certain polling booths of Lucknow also took the same initiative during the UP assembly polls in 2022 in a limited way. ECI even flagged Ahammed’s efforts in its publication ‘Belief in Ballot’ (Volume 2).