India is currently going through the long drawn electoral
carnival where almost 80.5 Crores people are going to exercise their Adult
Franchise. The 16th Lok Sabha elections are characterised by remarkable
enthusiasm as elections so far have recorded highest polling ever. However, the
Indian Diaspora abroad is deprived of this proud privilege. Indian Diaspora
comprises of two distinct categories- Person of Indian Origin (PIO) and Non-
Resident Indians (NRI). PIOs as the name suggests are Person of Indian Origin
or ancestry whose ancestors were born in India or nations with Indian ancestry
but not a citizen of India and have acquired the citizenship of a different
country. While NRI is a citizen of India holding Indian passport and has emigrated to a different country
temporarily for a period of six months or more for employment or education or
residence etc.
It sounds
ridiculous that a nation that tops the global remittances with whopping $71
billion (little short of three times the money received through FDI) and an IT
superpower failed to evolve a mechanism to allow 10 millions of Indians abroad
to cast votes in elections. 115 countries of the World allowed its overseas
citizens to vote albeit with some restrictions on the number of years of
overseas stay. These include 28 African countries which are less developed.
India too falls in this illustrious list after it has made amendments in the
Representation of the People (Amendment) Act, 2010 by inserting section 20A in
the Representation of People Act, 1950. As per the new amendment, a person who
is a citizen of India and hasn’t acquired the citizenship of any other country
is eligible to be registered as a voter. They can get their name registered as
a voter by filing duly filled Form 6A and sending the same to the Electoral
Registration Officer (ERO) of their respective constituency as per the place of
residency mentioned in the passport. Now a provision has been made to send the
form directly to the district collector.
Election
commission provides the facility of postal ballot to ‘service voters’ that
includes individuals who are residing outside India and employed in a post
under government and working for the cause of the Nation. This group includes members
of armed forces and persons who are employed by Government and residing outside
the country on government duty. Spouses of these people are also eligible for
postal ballot. But persons who are temporarily out of their polling station for
employment, education or working for private sector even within and outside the
country are not eligible for postal ballot. Thus, the huge numbers of the Indians
living abroad are denied of their franchise. Different countries across the
world have adopted different mechanisms to facilitate overseas voters. These
include postal ballot, internet voting, voting through proxies. Interestingly,
two countries Estonia and Netherlands allow internet voting while Australia accepts
voting by fax.
Even Supreme
Court in its recent judgement has directed the authorities to remove hurdles
for NRIs to vote from their country of residence. But it also admitted the
inability of Election Commission (EC) to allow postal or electronic voting this
season. The decision was widely welcomed by Diaspora who is very emotional and
touchy about the issues of national importance and look forward for greater political
participation. India may allow the postal ballots at the diplomatic mission
abroad as they do it for other Indian diplomats serving in foreign nations. But the whole proposition of Diaspora voting
is an uphill task and jammed with impediments of huge dimensions.
As a preface
to the whole process, a separate section of Overseas Electors is created and
all the registered overseas voters are included under this section in the
relevant constituencies. Thus, overseas voter can cast the vote in their constituency
in person. As of now no consolidated voting method has been adopted by EC for
the overseas voters who are unable to cast ballot in person. Internet voting
has been ruled out as it is prone to hacking. It is not possible to organise
voting for huge numbers of the persons by postal ballot in consulates and
Embassies as they are constrained by limited manpower and infrastructure.
Moreover, it is difficult to send large number of postal ballots to lakhs of
overseas electorate spread in different countries within a limited period of 15
days. Generally the duration between the day of finalisation of list of
contesting candidates and the date of counting is 18-19 days. The returning
officer will require at least 2 days for printing and dispatch of postal
ballot. Even staff in consulate is not allowed to cast postal ballot as it is
not a workable option. Also, they might belong to different constituencies and
arranging Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) for all of them is not a workable
option. If the EC were to allow the postal ballot of overseas Indians, it must
be able to provide 543 EVMs for Parliamentary Constituencies and 4120 Assembly
Constituencies showing the ballot paper (if both are held together). In some
countries there are large populations of Indian electors that it would be impossible
to arrange polling on a single day at Indian Missions. EVMs are to be arranged
at several Indian missions in large countries otherwise people have to drive
several miles to reach the embassies. It would be very difficult to arrange for
the personnel to conduct polls and making security arrangements, etc in foreign
land.
Though disenfranchisement of 10
million Indians living abroad is of serious concern so far little progress has
been made to find out a suitable voting mechanism for this large chunk voting
in absentia. Of the 14,000 online valid applications received for registration with election authorities 12,653 voters are from Kerala.
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