The strange rules of NRI voting
The TLDR: The government is poised to amend election rules that will allow Non Resident Indians to vote in elections at home. But this privilege will only be extended to voters in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Germany, France and South Africa. Excluded from this list (for now): millions of Indians living in Gulf countries. The government’s reason for their exclusion is a bit strange.
Quick background
First, defining NRI: We tend to use the term very loosely to refer to any person from India living abroad. But not everybody at that Howdy Modi event in Texas is an NRI—at least, as per this law. Many of them have a foreign passport plus an Overseas Citizen of India card—which does not confer the right to vote. The new rules only apply to Indian citizens living abroad.
How they vote now: Under the current rules, an NRI has to show up in person at a voting booth in the constituency as per the home address listed on their passport— which they have to show as their Voter ID. Even this system was put in place in 2011. Before that, NRIs did not have any voting rights.
A brief legal history:
- A measure to allow NRIs to vote has been in the works since 2013—in response to three Supreme Court petitions.
- After the 2014 elections, a 12-member committee was set up to study three options: postal ballots, voting in person at an embassy, and voting online.
- The online option was dismissed as unsafe.
- Indian embassies and consulates don’t have the resources to act as voting centres.
- So a year later, the committee settled on postal ballots.
- Plus: A bill that allowed NRIs to vote by proxy—i.e pick a representative who will vote for them in India—passed the Lok Sabha. But it was allowed to lapse.
The latest development: The Election Commission wrote a letter to the government that said it was finally ready to implement the committee’s recommendation—and can do so in time for state elections next year in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Hence, here we are.
Point to note: To make this happen, the government can merely amend the Conduct of Election Rules—and does not need parliamentary approval.
Ok, how many NRIs are there?
There are no exact numbers. There are 16 million Indians spread across the world—the largest diaspora in the world—but not all of them are citizens. According to rough estimates, there are 10 million overseas voters—of which 6 million are of voting age.
Adding to the muddle, the Election Commission does not categorise NRIs by their country of residence. It instead maintains state-wise lists of registered overseas voters. Of these 1.18 lakh voters, Kerala has the largest number: 89,000. The rest are distributed among Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka etc. Of course, those numbers will dramatically change once postal voting kicks in.
How will postal voting work?
Once election dates are announced, an overseas voter has to notify the Returning Officer in their constituency of their intention to vote within five days. The RO will then send the ballot via email or other such digital means to… the reporting is abysmally unclear on this. The Indian Express does not specify who receives the ballot. It may either be the voter or the nearest consulate/embassy. Because the rest of the process is described as so:
“A designated officer in the Indian mission will download the ballot paper on the voter’s behalf, and hand it over to the overseas elector. The overseas elector can then mark her preference at the mission, get the self-declaration form attested by the designated officer, and hand back the ballot paper and declaration form in a sealed envelope to the mission. The mission will then dispatch all the envelopes to the election officer concerned.”
Point to note: This is pretty much the same as in-person voting at an embassy or consulate—except for the burden of verifying a voter’s eligibility. And this process is also a key reason for excluding Gulf voters.
How is it a reason to nix Gulf voters?
While coming up with the postal ballot option, the committee consulted the Ministry of External Affairs—which said the following:
“The MEA had said ‘diplomatic missions do not have the logistical wherewithal to handle attestation for a large number of overseas electors’ and that they would have to seek the permission of the host country for organising such activity, which may be difficult in non-democratic countries.”
And here’s the reason offered (via Indian Express) for not including Gulf countries in this ‘pilot program’ to enable overseas voting:
“The [Election] Commission obviously does not have anything against the NRIs settled in the Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, the MEA has in the past expressed strong reservations over facilitating voting for Indian citizens living in non-democratic nations.
Holding a democratic exercise, involving voters queuing outside Indian Missions and Embassies, in non-democratic countries will require permissions, and the host nation may not approve.”
Some points to note:
- Gulf countries were excluded due to the government’s objections.
- Also: there is no indication why a “non-democratic country” would be less likely to give permission—since overseas voters of other nationalities (including US, UK etc.) have been voting in their elections while residing in these very same countries.
- Indians who reside in Gulf countries are most likely to be eligible to vote—since those nations do not offer any path to citizenship.
- There are 34,20,000 Indians in just the United Arab Emirates—and account for 27% of its total population.
Who does this affect the most?
Overseas voters from Kerala—which accounts for 30 lakh-plus NRIs who reside overwhelmingly in Gulf countries. They are also the most enthusiastic: Of the 99,807 NRIs who registered to vote in the 2019 election, 87,651 were from Kerala.
Also key to note: The biggest beneficiaries of the Gulf vote would be the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League—since most of these NRIs are Muslim.
The bottomline: The government appears to have confused a constitutional right with an electoral laddu—and perhaps for good reason. Also: 280 million migrant workers do not have the privilege of casting a postal ballot even though they live and work in this country.
Reading list
Indian Express has an explainer on the new rules. Deccan Herald explains why Kerala would be the biggest beneficiary—except it's not. We previously dived into the BJP party’s big overseas constituency—and the reasons it has grown increasingly powerful in the US. The Citizen offers a full-throated rant against giving NRIs the right vote at a distance.