As the Election Commission (EC) and the Central government remain clueless on evolving a foolproof voting mechanism for overseas electors, the enthusiasm of Non-Resident Keralites (NoRKSs) to become part of the electoral process in the State seems to be declining.
Against the 10,000-odd NoRKs who registered their names for voting in the last Lok Sabha elections, the present elections saw only a rather negligible increase of 23,289, comprising 21,637 male and 1,652 female voters. This was in spite of the vociferous demand of the State government to the Election Commission and the Centre to initiate steps to ensure voting rights for NoRKs in the local body to Lok Sabha elections.
The Election Commission sources told The Hindu here that the number of registered electors in the present elections was too insignificant when compared to an estimated population of about 15 lakh Keralites living abroad. The EC had submitted a set of suggestions to the Centre in 2014 to extend the voting facility to all Non-Resident Indians. The Centre had informed the Supreme Court on January 12 that it had accepted the recommendations and was willing to allow them to vote either through e-postal ballots or proxy voting.
Introduction of any reform calls for an amendment to Section 20 (A) of the Representation of the People’s (Amendment) Act 2010. But for raising the demand to involve NRIs in the polling process, no initiative has been made so far for amending the parent Act.
Risks involved
Be it e-postal ballot, proxy or online voting, all these modes are exposed to serious risks and could be adopted only after putting in place adequate safeguards. Maintaining the secrecy of voting and guaranteeing safety of the system, against hacking, are the most important factors. No foolproof mechanism had been evolved for having any of these systems, sources said.
For instance, on installing booths for online voting in labour camps in the Gulf countries, the employers could well coax the labourers to part with them their username and password and this would give them access to the system and misuse the facility.
The government and the EC would have to seriously explore all options before settling down on any system and that would be time-consuming too, sources said.
