 "Why has NRI voting remained a pious platitude?")
As per the expert committee appointed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2014, there are about 10 million Non-Resident Indians scattered across the globe commonly referred to as the Indian diaspora. The figure having been provided by the committee in its 2014 report might require revision but can be accepted as a ballpark figure for the purpose of this article. Now, NRIs come in two categories — those who have renounced their Indian citizenship and those holding Indian passports. It is only the latter who are allowed to vote in the Indian elections.
I must, however, hasten to add that not all NRI Indian passport holders can vote because some of them might be under the age of 18, the cut off age for enfranchisement. Let us assume after these filtrations, we have five million NRI eligible voters. Their rights do matter. Political parties aren’t strangely gushing in their demand for putting in place a workable system to enable them to cast their franchise in the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections.
As it is, the eligible NRIs have to fill form 6A online or offline, upload or attach their Indian passports bearing Indian home address along with the valid visa page and also upload or attach a photograph. The ECI would include them in the overseas voters list of the relevant constituency after their applications are vetted by the concerned embassy/consulate. They have however got to present themselves at the polling booth in India on the date of election. This has come as a damp squib to them. Small wonder only 11,846 eligible NRI voters as of 2014 had evinced interest with bulk of them being from Kerala.
Writ petitions have been filed before the Apex Court for making voting easier and from the comfort of their foreign homes but the ECI’s response has been it is still a work in progress as the process cannot be hurried. The ECI website says under the mode of voting for the eligible NRIs while at present the only option is to vote at the relevant polling booth in India by presenting the passport, soon it will issue e-ballot papers.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIndeed, the committee in its 2014 report conceded that voting at the embassies/high commissions/consulates while appearing to be voter-friendly is not workable in practice as the NRI voters may hail from any of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and 4,120 Assembly constituencies. How can EVM from all the constituencies be flown to all such embassies, etc, and gotten back on time? Furthermore, how to handle the massive turnover in a single day? To wit, a large part of the Indian US diaspora lives in the Silicon Valley or bay area. A massive throng would be difficult to handle. So, the committee dismissed the idea. Rightly so.
It is also not in favour of online voting as hacking and sabotaging through malware, trojan horses etc. cannot be ruled out. An election process must be foolproof, period. The Committee therefore shortlisted the following two modes and commended them to the ECI for adoption:
Voting through a proxy. Not a bad idea at all as there is already a parallel — voting at company meetings. In fact, the company law mandates every public company to circulate along with the Annual Report a form for proxy to be lodged with the company at least 48 hours before the meeting and that such a proxy need not himself/herself be a member. A proxy however cannot speak at the meeting nor can he vote on show of hands but only in a ballot. There is no reason why the provisions on proxy in the company law cannot be imported into the Representation of People’s Act 1951 mutatis mutandis to make voting easier for the eligible NRIs.
Voting through e-ballot which the ECI would email to the registered NRI voters who should cast their vote and send the e-ballot through post.
It is not surprising the ECI says that e-ballot would be issued soon thus apparently making proxy is its second choice. The unstated reason could be professional proxies may step in to exploit the situation. They could hijack the NRI part of the elections. But then even e-ballots can be intercepted by crooks during transit. Anyway, the ECI can operate both e-ballot and proxy in tandem maybe on pilot basis and based on the experience gained plump for one and discard the other or permit both i.e., give the eligible NRI to plump for proxy or e-ballot.
Looks like in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections, registered NRIs must resign themselves to watching the electioneering passively unless they bestir themselves and make an expensive pilgrimage to their constituency. The fortunate ones would be those who have, say, a marriage to attend on the election eve and combine the trip for both the purposes. In fact, the need to present themselves at the polling booth is responsible for the lukewarm response to the overseas voter registration process.
But once e-ballot or proxy is permitted, the registration process might pick up and the number of overseas voters may leapfrog to millions. There is no reason why NRIs should be denied their voting rights merely for logistics reasons.
The writer is a senior columnist. He tweets @smurlidharan. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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