New Delhi: The National Election Quiz 2018 (NEQ 2018), organized by the Election Commission of India covering the entire country, has attracted a record participation of 13,63,982 students from 38,160 schools. With the huge participation, the NEQ 2018 lays claim to the feat of being the world’s largest Inter-School Quiz on Elections.
The marathon quiz programme began in November 2017. It had six fiercely contested zonal level episodes, culminating in the grand finale in New Delhi on the 11th March, 2018. Winning teams from the six zones, Manipur, Puducherry, Goa, Delhi, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir, contested for the prestigious trophy in the finale. Several intra-school, district and state rounds were held earlier to select zonal level contestants with the help of state education authorities.
The trophy of the NEQ-2018 has been lifted by Madhur Jain and Aditya Kumar of the DPS, Ranchi, Jharkhand. The first runner up position was sealed by St. Patrick Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Puducherry, represented by V.Vishnu Priya and R.Mithun Krishna. Shangker Singh Laishram and Ashmaan Mainali of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Senapati, Manipur emerged the second runners up. The grand finale has been anchored by the renowned quiz master Shri Vikram Joshi.
The grand prize of the NEQ 2018 carried a cash award of Rs 1,00,000. The first runner up team gets Rs 80,000 and the second runner up Rs 60,000. The other three finalist teams took home the cash purse of Rs 50,000. An audience response round was one of the features in each zonal episode that ensured popular response to the quiz programmes. Attractive prizes were given away by the ECI to the first 50 correct responses from the audience.
All seven episodes of the NEQ 2018 were telecast live by the Rajya Sabha Television. In addition, the final episode was live-streamed in the social media site Facebook India. The seven-episode series was premiered on the National Voters Day on 25th January, 2018, that included the hour-long grand finale. The cumulative viewership of the NEQ 2018 in social media has crossed 2 lakh till 15th March, 2018.
The content of the NEQ-2018 included a range of subjects like Elections in India, the History of Democracies and Elections, the Voting Processes, Types of Elections, Voter Education and Literacy, National Voters Day, Election Terminologies, Elections Across the World, Electoral Management Bodies and a plethora of election-related topics.
The NEQ 2018 is an initiative by the Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme of the Election Commission of India. It forms part of its initiatives to promote electoral literacy among youngsters in the age group of 14 to 17. The Interactive School Engagement (ISE) and the recently launched Electoral Literacy Clubs (ELC) also form part of the SVEEP programmes.
