Mumbai, Apr 1 : On the eve of parliamentary elections, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) launched a nationwide voter awareness campaign with Aamir Khan. The campaign's theme “Sacche ko chune, Acche ko chune” means “vote for integrity, vote for good people” urges citizens to make an informed choice.

The thought provoking campaign consists of 3 ad films, print ads, internet and mobile communication. Not only has Aamir Khan not charged for appearing in the ads but his production company Aamir Khan Production has also borne the cost of producing the ad films.

Aamir has also roped in Prasoon Joshi of McCann Erickson as the creative head, Rakyesh Mehra as the director, Avinash Gowarikar as the still photographer and Shashi Sinha of Lodestar Media as the media planner for the campaign, who are also doing it for no charges as they all believe in this campaign.

Interestingly, the ad campaign will be in most languages like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telegu, Kannad, Malayalam, Bengali, Assami and Oriya to reach out to more people.

The television, print and radio campaign focuses on providing voters detailed information about candidates.

The Lok Sabha elections are being held in five phases, with polling dates being 16, 23, 30 April and 7, 13 May. Affidavit information is compiled totally roughly ten days before poll dates and is not easily accessible to voters.

About Association of Democratic Reforms Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) is a Non-Political, Non-Partisan and a Non-Governmental Organization. It was founded in August 1, 1999 by a group of Professors from the Indian Institute of
Management (IIM), Ahmedabad and National Institute of Design and some alumni of IIM to work towards strengthening democracy and governance in India by focusing on fair and transparent electoral processes.

ADR is part of the 1200 strong NGO network called National Election Watch. It was instrumental in securing voters' right to know about their candidates, through a public interest lawsuit in 1999, which culminated in the landmark Supreme Court judgment in 2003. The law now requires candidates to furnish details about their finances, education and criminal cases (if any) through a sworn affidavit. In the past seven years, ADR and its partners have conducted election watch activities in more than 25 states, in assembly as well as parliamentary elections. The affidavits of candidates become available barely ten days before polling, and are not easily accessible to voters. ADR and NEW have sought to fill this gap by widely disseminating this detailed information through a toll free number, sms and website. This is an entirely citizens' initiative.