The Overseas Indian Cultural Congress (OICC), a body of expatriates associated with the ruling Congress party, has decided to move the Election Commission of India (ECI) demanding online voting facility for Indians living abroad.
India gave voting rights to Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in 2010 through an amendment in its Representation of People’s Act 1951 much to the delight of the diaspora.
However, the ECI failed to put an appropriate mechanism in place to enable them to exercise their franchise.
“We have decided to meet the chief election commissioner V S Sampath along with Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and other top Congress party leaders to raise the demand for an appropriate voting facility,” said K M Sharief Kunju, general secretary, OICC.
The OICC took the decision at a meeting in Thrissur presided over by its global president, C K Menon, in the presence of M M Hassan, Kerala’s former minister for the diaspora and the Congress party’s vice-president in the state.
NRIs are currently allowed to register as a voter online but are permitted to exercise their franchise only if they are present in their constituencies at the time of voting.
Predictably, the response to the demand for the online enrolling facility has been lukewarm so far. Two months ago, a delegation of India’s principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) met Sampath, seeking an appropriate mechanism for the absentee voting. It also proposed postal ballot or voting facility at the Indian Missions abroad.
Today, 115 countries allow their nationals abroad to use the postal ballot facility.
The Indian diaspora accounts for more than 10mn people spread across the globe, nearly half of them based in the Gulf countries.
However, only 11,844 of them have enrolled as voters across India so far.
Of these, 11,448 are from Kerala followed by Punjab (138), Tamil Nadu (112), Pondicherry (56), Goa (27), Delhi and Maharashtra (13), Gujarat (39), Madhya Pradesh (6) and West Bengal (5). Half of the states drew a blank.
The diaspora population from Kerala, India’s largest exporter of manpower, is estimated to be more than 2mn in the Gulf states alone and their remittances help sustain the industrially laggard state’s economy. “We have every right to have a say in the selection of our representatives and matters of governance like how the remittances of more than Rs800bn is going to be utilised,” said K V Shamsudheen, director of the Dubai-based trading firm, Geojit Barjeel Securities.
Though the small number of voters is not expected to make any electoral difference, the OICC is planning to go ahead with its SMS and social media campaign among NRIs against the “dangers India’s unity and diversity is facing from the divisive and communal forces” with an aim to influence their families back home. The Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC), another group with considerable clout among Kerala expatriates across the Gulf countries and affiliated to the Congress party’s key ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), is reportedly planning to charter an aircraft for those who intend to vote.
“After the elections we will know exactly how many of them have exercised their franchise. Those who are on vacation may vote but I don’t think anybody will go all the way back home merely to cast their vote,” Shamsudheen commented.
