Indians’ right and opportunity to vote

When some American friends of mine from my alma mater, the University of Texas, met me in India around the time elections were underway in the US, the conversation meandered to the elections

Indians' right and opportunity to vote

When some American friends of mine from my alma mater, the University of Texas, met me in India around the time elections were underway in the US, the conversation meandered to the elections. I particularly wished to know why they were away around election time and thereby missing the opportunity to cast vote. I was rather surprised at their reply that they had already voted while in India, since absentee voting is prevalent in the US.
In India, a large number of citizens will not be able to exercise their right to vote in this month's poll. There are no provisions in Indian law to enable migrant workers (estimated to be over 100 million), non-resident Indians (approximately 4 million), students studying abroad (over 80,000 per annum go to the US alone), travelling business professionals, and senior or unwell citizens who may not be able to travel to the polling booth, to vote in an alternative manner.

Given the democratic aspirations of the citizens of India and its global standing as the largest democracy, there is a case for providing a stronger constitutional foundation to strengthen the right to vote. A number of developed countries implement various forms of absentee voting, such as Internet voting (Switzerland, the US, France), proxy voting (the Netherlands) and postal voting.

While India does have a limited form of postal voting, it is not available to enough people. In a 2003 amendment to the Representation of People Act, 1951, Section 60(c) provides for enabling "any person belonging to a class of persons notified by the Election Commission ufffd to give his vote by postal ballot." While this provision clearly provides scope for the recognition of a "class of persons" entitled to cast votes by post, it has been used only in a limited number of cases, concerning migrants from Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram and Tripura.

It is imperative that the country expands the postal ballot system to allow all citizens to vote by post. Of course, any such expansion will need careful consideration of issues relating to security, integrity of the electoral process, checks and balances to ensure proper implementation, efforts to eliminate its abuse, complexity of logistics, and other requirements of the EC and state electoral apparatuses.

But these challenges, formidable as they are, should not discourage India from moving towards developing a wider framework for the postal ballot system. The purpose of my call is to make electoral process far more inclusive such that every citizen not only has the right, but also the opportunity to vote.

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