Vijayawada: Telugu Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), from both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, living abroad are not interested in registering as voters in the country.
As per the latest electoral rolls published by the Election Commission of India (ECI) till February this year, AP had only 15 and Telanagana has five NRIs registered as voters even though there are lakhs of Telugus belonging to the two states living abroad. Of the 15 NRIs from Andhra Pradesh who have registered as voters, 11 are men and four are women. In Telangana, three men and two women NRIs have registered as voters.
The excessive travel expenses to visit their home states seem to have deterred the NRIs from registering as voters. The trend is expected to be reversed as India has initiated steps to allow proxy voting for NRIs and as a first step, a bill was passed in the Lok Sabha recently. However, it will take some more time for NRIs to be able vote by proxy as the Bill must be passed by the Rajya Sabha and needs assent from the President of India to become an Act.
The Representation of People Act, 1950 (RP Act) was amended in 2010 to include special provisions for Indian citizens living abroad in the electoral rolls. Of the more than 3.12 crore NRIs, less than 0.1 per cent (only 24,507) have registered as voters as per the electoral rolls published by the Election Commission of India in early 2018. Of these, only 1,942 are women. The majority of the NRIs, who have registered as voters, are from Kerala.
The ECI started publishing data on NRI voters from 2012. As per the 2012 data, 10,002 NRIs had registered as voters. This number increased to only 24,507 in 2018.
“Most of the NRIs lack awareness about the benefits of registering as voters. If the ECI had created awareness among NRIs, I am sure the numbers would have gone up. Now that the facility of proxy voting is being considered for NRIs, more persons may show interest in registering as voters. I am sure many NRIs are more than interested in being a part of the Indian electoral process,” said Bhargav Nidadavolu, who lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.
