The Supreme Court on Monday sought the government's response to an application on allowing inter-State migrants the same voting privileges, like postal ballot, accorded to government servants.
Section 20(8) (d) of the Representation of the People Act 1950 read with Section 60(b) of the Representation of the People Act 1951 allows government servants and certain other class of persons to vote via postal ballot following the Election Commission's consent.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu issued notice to the government, and gave it four weeks' time to respond on the application by Dr. V.P. Shamsheer, a native of Kozhikode, Kerala, based in UAE.
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Dr. Shamsheer, represented by senior advocate Dushyant Dave and advocate Haris Beeran, was one of the two petitioners who successfully fought for the rights of NRIs to vote from abroad.
His present application seeks the Supreme Court intervention to set up a method for in-country migrants – who leave their constituency for reasons of work/employment, business, education, marriage, etc. — to vote from their current place of residence.
According to him, the number of migrants within the country is “staggering.”
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