Kerala Assembly Elections: Committed to democracy

Thiruvananthapuram: Nothing better amplifies the overseas Malayalee’s commitment to the ballot. At least 19,000 non-resident Keralites have registered with the Election Commission to vote in the Assembly elections. This is but a tiny part of the 1 crore NRIs. Yet it is significant because of the total 11,846 overseas electors registered for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, 11,448 (96.64 percent) were NRKs.

This was made possible by the Centre accepting the Diaspora demand and inserting a new provision in the Representation of the People Act in 2010, amending the law which stipulated that only a citizen ordinarily resident within the territorial limits of a constituency in the country was eligible to vote.

Till such time the Centre approves and Election Commission implements the proposal for e-postal ballot, NRKs will have to make themselves available in their respective constituencies with passports to cast the ballots themselves. Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre had gone ahead on this and mobilized a few hundreds to fly home by chartered flights.

The NRI vote had traversed a tortuous route to reach this stage. The latest E-postal ballot proposal envisages NRIs downloading the blank ballot, marking his vote and returning it by post to the EC official. The NRI wishing to vote through this procedure would have to send an application either electronically or physically to the returning officer.

Now, to get this implemented the Centre will have to move amendments to the Representation of the People Act to facilitate e-ballots to the Diaspora. The Centre has in mind the Armed Force and service personnel,too. However, millions of migrant labour who are no less eligible will have to await the first raft of experiments with the NRIs.

Advocate Harris Beeran, who has taken the NRI franchise case on behalf of Dr Shamsheer Vayalil to the Supreme Court, says the NRI in places other than the Gulf slowly integrated with the host country. But gulf-based NRKs are still tied to the apron strings. From across the seas, they also continue to participate in the domestic economy. And this for proof: They remitted Rs 1 lakh crore last year. The State should go all out to respond to their aspiration to be part of the electoral republic, though in a limited way.  

Some 114 countries, including 20 Asian nations, have adopted external voting. External voting could be held by setting up polling booths at diplomatic missions or through postal, proxy or electronic voting. But the EC has rejected booths at missions because such a spectacle will be least desirable in kingdoms in the Gulf where such electoral convergence is still an alien concept.

The issue of voting rights to NRIs is now being examined by an 11-member panel of ministers. Mr Beeran says he is hopeful that the move will pass the muster of EC and the inter-ministerial committee. And the next stage should be electronic voting for all, not just e-ballots returnable by post. Possibly, this could work wonders ensuring a higher voter 'turnout'. For now the stress is on the vote back home for the NRK.