SPEAKING FREELY Indians' right and opportunity to vote
By Naveen Jindal
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When some American friends from my alma mater, the University of Texas, visited
India in November 2008, the conversation led to the US elections and the fervor
with which the candidates were campaigning. I was eager to find out why my
friends were in India on election day, missing the opportunity to vote. I was
extremely surprised to learn that they had already voted, as absentee voting is
widely prevalent in the US.
In India, a large number of citizens will not be able to exercise
their right to vote in this month's polls. For instance, there are no
provisions in Indian law to enable migrant workers within India (estimated to
be over 100 million by the government), non-resident Indians living overseas
(approximately 4 million), students studying abroad (more than 80,000 per annum
go to the US alone), travelling business professionals and senior or unwell
citizens who may not be able to travel to the polling booth to vote in an
alternative manner.
The right to vote under Indian law flows from both the constitution and the
Representation of the People Act of 1950 and 1951. A citizen of India, who is
18 years of age, has a right to be registered as a voter in a constituency
irrespective of his or her race, religion, caste or sex. Given the democratic
aspirations of the citizens of India and its global standing as the world's
largest - and one of the most vibrant - democracies, there is a case for
providing a stronger constitutional foundation to strengthen the right to vote.
The best practices that prevail in different parts of the world demonstrate
that governments need to make substantial efforts to ensure greater
participation of their citizenry in the electoral process. A number of
developed countries implement various forms of absentee voting, such as
Internet voting (Switzerland, the US, France, etc), proxy voting (the
Netherlands) and postal voting, which has emerged as the most popular form of
absentee voting. People in countries such as the US, Britain, Switzerland and
Australia have benefited greatly by the implementation of postal voting.
India does have a limited form of postal voting, but it is not accessed by
enough people to create a meaningful impact towards making the electoral
process more inclusive. For instance, The Conduct of Election Rules 1961 in
section 18(a) provides for the following list of persons entitled to vote by
post in a parliamentary or assembly constituency: special voters (the president
of India, vice president, governors et al.); service voters (armed forces,
members of a force to which the army act applies et al.); voters on election
duty (polling agents, polling officers et al.); and electors subjected to
preventive detention. This provision provides for the right to vote for certain
specified categories of persons resident in India, but still leaves out a large
number of people who have difficulties exercising their right to vote.
In an amendment to the Representation of People Act, 1951 in 2003, section
60(c) provided for enabling "any person belonging to a class of persons
notified by the Election Commission in consultation with the government to give
his vote by postal ballot”. While this provision clearly provides scope for the
recognition of a "class of persons" to be entitled to exercise their right to
vote by way of postal ballot, it has been used in the past for a limited number
of cases concerning migrants from Jammu and Kashmir and Bru and Reang tribal
migrants from Mizoram and Tripura, allowing them to vote through postal ballot.
For a variety of reasons, including travel, illness, disability and personal
difficulties including education, employment etc a large number of Indians are
not able to be physically present on the day of the elections in the
constituencies where their vote is registered. In the true spirit of Indian
democracy, it is imperative that the country now expands the postal ballot
system to allow all Indian citizens to exercise their right to vote by post.
Of course, any such expansion will need to carefully consider the issues
relating to the security and integrity of the electoral process, the need for
ensuring secret ballot, availability of checks and balances to ensure the
proper implementation of the postal ballot system, efforts to reduce and
progressively eliminate the abuse of the postal ballot system, complexity of
the logistics and other manpower and resource requirements of the Election
Commission of India and state electoral apparatuses.
Implementing a larger postal ballot system will necessitate thorough
preparation, in addition to many other legal and policy issues that crop up
when an electorate of 700 million goes to the polls. But these challenges,
formidable as they are, should not discourage India as a mature democracy from
moving towards developing a wider framework for implementing the right to vote
through the postal ballot system and other policies that will increase the
political participation of people in the electoral process. The depth of
democracy depends crucially on the dimension of participation. India already
has robust competition among political parties, but it is the participation
aspect where a lot more needs to be achieved.
The problems with implementing a more inclusive postal ballot system and the
potential abuse of absentee voting should not deter the Indian government from
ensuring that the right to vote of every Indian citizen is duly enforced. The
purpose of my call is to make the electoral process in India far more inclusive
and far less cumbersome, such that each and every Indian is able to exercise
not only the right to vote, but also have the opportunity to vote.
Naveen Jindal is a member of parliament (Lok Sabha - Lower House) from
the Congress Party, representing the Kurukshetra constituency in the northern
Indian state of Haryana.
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Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say.
Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
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