Domestic migrants may get to vote during polls in native places

Millions of domestic migrants in India may soon get to vote in elections in their native areas without leaving their places of employment if a government proposal to extend postal ballot facilities to them is successful.

Updated on: Sep 20, 2015, 09:27:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Millions of domestic migrants in India may soon get to vote in elections in their native areas without leaving their places of employment if a government proposal to extend postal ballot facilities to them is successful.

Voters-wanting-to-cast-their-ballot-look-at-voters-lists-to-find-their-voting-station-at-a-polling-station-in-Mathura-Uttar-Pradesh--AFP-photo

Sources said a committee of ministers has been asked to examine the possibility of allowing the choice of postal ballots — both electronically and through proxy voters — to domestic migrant labourers and workers, in consultation with the election commission.

But the facility may take a few years to materialise throughout India as the poll panel will have to create an elaborate mechanism for its implementation for domestic workers.

The EC estimates around 12-15% of the 815 million voters in India fall in the migrant category, based on an analysis of the frequent changes made in electoral rolls.

But a vast majority of these eligible voters don’t get to exercise their franchise when polls are held in their native areas as most cannot afford to travel or miss work.

A National Sample Survey Office survey in 2007-08 said around 29% of Indians were migrants, moving mostly from rural to urban areas.

Moreover, a comparison of the 2001 and 2011 census figures showed a four percentage point jump in the proportion of India’s urban population.

With such large numbers of eligible poor voters left out because of work-related migration, government sources said the prime minister’s office asked an informal ministerial group to examine whether domestic migrant workers can get facilities as proposed to be given to non-resident Indians.

In 2014, the Supreme Court had asked the EC to consider allowing NRIs to vote from their place of employment.

The poll panel recommended a new e-postal ballot system and extension of the existing proxy-voting facility for NRI voters from their place of residence abroad, and was accepted by the government.

The government also decided to extend e-postal ballots to defence personnel and those on election duty.

In e-postal system, the ballot paper is emailed to the voter at a dedicated email address and the person is required to send the marked ballot paper through post to the returning officer of the constituency where he or she is a registered voter. These postal votes are counted before the regular process of counting of votes is done.

In the case of proxy voting, a person can authorise a family member to vote on their behalf after getting an authorisation letter signed by his superior or a magistrate. The authorisation document has to be sent to the returning officer of the constituency where he or she has a vote.

The law ministry recently circulated a cabinet note seeking an amendment in section 60 of the Representation of People’s Act to provide an option of voting in person, by proxy or by postal ballots ------ including e-postal ballots to overseas voters, services voters, armed forces personnel and their spouses to exercise their franchise.

The note was approved by the ministries of finance, home and external affairs before the PMO sought expansion of the proposed amendment.

EC sources said the proposal can be implemented once electoral rolls are cleaned of duplicate voters and there is a unique voter identity number for each voter. The EC has already created a digital national electoral roll and promises to remove most duplicates by next year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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