With news com­ing in that the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia is soon go­ing to an­nounce the dates of the 2019 gen­eral elec­tions, there is no rea­son to de­lay reg­is­tra­tion for e-vot­ing by non-res­i­dent cit­i­zens.

The stage is set for the 2019 gen­eral elec­tions to the Lok Sabha –the lower house of the In­dian Par­lia­ment.  Non-res­i­dent Pun­jabis keen to play a de­ci­sive role in the forth­com­ing elec­tions must en­roll on­line as vot­ers on the web­site of the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia.

Each voter is re­quired to fill in Form 6a (presently avail­able only in Eng­lish, Hindi and Malay­alam) and each voter can nom­i­nate a proxy un­der the rules un­der the Amend­ment to the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act 1950, adopted by the In­dian Par­lia­ment in Au­gust last year.

In­di­vid­u­als who are cit­i­zens of the coun­try and have not ac­quired or ap­plied for cit­i­zen­ship of their coun­try of res­i­dence and are In­dian Pass­port hold­ers are el­i­gi­ble for e-vot­ing un­der the rules and reg­u­la­tions set by the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia.

This is for the first time that proxy vot­ing for cit­i­zens who are non-res­i­dent in the coun­try is be­ing al­lowed. Hereto­fore, ex­pa­tri­ates were ex­pected to be phys­i­cally pre­sent in In­dia and it has been es­ti­mated that barely 10 to 15 thou­sand of the 31 mil­lion prospec­tive vot­ers ex­er­cised their right to fran­chise.

As elec­tion­eer­ing picks up in In­dia with the for­ma­tion of new par­ties and new al­liances, it is time for vot­ers also to get their act to­gether. A good chunk of non-res­i­dent In­di­ans are Non-res­i­dent Pun­jabis and the 2019 gen­eral elec­tions to the In­dian par­lia­ment pro­vides them with an op­por­tu­nity to ap­point prox­ies for their vot­ing rights.

The Non-res­i­dent Pun­jabis have played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the pol­i­tics of Pun­jab –be it sup­port to the cause of Sikh rights or the over­whelm­ing lo­gis­ti­cal, emo­tional and prac­ti­cal sup­port to the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party in Pun­jab. Prior to the 2014 gen­eral elec­tions, both the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal and the In­dian Na­tional Con­gress in Pun­jab has been re­ceiv­ing sub­stan­tial sup­port in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively from their over­seas branches in coun­tries like the US, UK, Canada and parts of Eu­rope where there is over­whelm­ing pres­ence of their sup­port­ers.

Pol­icy an­a­lyst Natasha Jha Bhaskar of the Ob­server Re­search Foun­da­tion has raised very a per­ti­nent ar­gu­ment about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the e-vot­ing process for NRIs. She says, “The im­ple­men­ta­tion of it all, how­ever, has its own chal­lenges. Some op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal par­ties be­lieve that it could never be guar­an­teed that the proxy voter would vote as per the wishes of the ac­tual voter. Proxy vot­ing suf­fers from the in­her­ent prob­lem of ‘trust de­fi­cien­cy’, and vi­o­lates the prin­ci­ples of ‘se­crecy of vot­ing’ and ‘free and fair elec­tions.”

She fur­ther adds that, “Bribery and in­duce­ments of vot­ers are strictly kept in check in elec­tions. These are im­pos­si­ble to im­ple­ment abroad. There can be no guar­an­tee of NRI vot­ers ex­er­cis­ing their vote in a free and fair man­ner, as there can be no check on co­er­cion or in­duce­ments by em­ploy­ers and su­per­vi­sors. A ma­jor­ity of for­eign mi­grants are poor work­ers of­ten at the mercy of their em­ploy­ers who even take their pass­ports into cus­tody.”

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If you would like to play a part in de­cid­ing who will be next Prime Min­is­ter or the party that will gov­ern the coun­try, do not de­lay and en­rol on­line on the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia web­site.