Proxy Voting Option for NRIs Gets Govt Nod

The Indian government on Wednesday approved a proposal to permit Non-Resident Indians to cast their vote in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections from overseas by bringing about changes in electoral laws. If the proposal is cleared in Parliament, NRIs will be able to vote through “proxy”.

Amendment in the Act

The government will soon bring a bill to amend the Representation of the People Act that will allow proxy voting for NRIs. Currently, NRIs and overseas Indians can cast vote in constituencies in which they are registered. They have to fly to India to exercise their voting right, a practice followed by only about 10,000 people.

The proposed changes, once they come into effect, will enable about 16 million NRIs to vote in Indian elections through their nominee living in their constituencies.  One person will be allowed to vote as proxy for only one Indian living overseas.

Service Personnel Exercise Proxy votes

Currently, the option to vote through proxy is only available for service personnel. However, unlike the case of the armed forces personnel, where they can declare their relatives as a permanent nominee for casting vote on their behalf, NRIs cannot nominate one proxy for all elections. So they will have to declare a nominee who will vote on their behalf each time an election is held.

The Election Commission had started considering the issue of allowing NRIs to cast their vote from abroad in 2014, after continuous requests were being made. Rajya Sabha MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal was one of the prominent voices to speak in favour of the matter. Many others, however, had objected to the proposal, saying the practice would violate the principle of “secret ballot”. In 2015, an expert committee in the Election Commission that studied the issue had submitted guidelines to the law ministry for amendment of electoral laws to allow proxy voting for NRIs.

The government had also weighed the option of postal ballots — by sending ballot papers electronically to the NRIs, who would be required to mark their vote and send them back to the nearest embassy or consulate. However, this option was rejected because of the cumbersome nature of the exercise.