Supreme Court to address voting right of domestic migrants too

The Bench was also hearing a PIL filed by an NRI Shamsheer seeking such facility. The petitioners had submitted that over one crore people would be entitled to cast their vote if NRIs were allowed to vote from overseas. They argued that 114 countries had adopted external voting and among them were 20 Asian countries.

The ASG told the bench that the government had accepted in principle the suggestion of the Election Commission and once the Bill to amend the Representation of the People Act was approved by the Cabinet, it would be introduced in Parliament to provide for NRI voting.

According to the EC, the e-postal ballot system has almost no risk of manipulation, rigging or violation of secrecy. The EC had said the system could be initially tried in “one or two constituencies in elections to the legislative Assemblies”.

It added that the system could then be “scaled up to more Assembly elections and finally Parliamentary elections if found feasible, practicable and meeting the objectives of free and fair elections”.

On the plea of allowing domestic migrants to vote in any place where they had migrated, the Election Commission informed the court that it had set up an in-house panel to study how domestic migrants residing outside their home town can vote and the report is expected in September. The Bench said it will wait for the progress in the case and take up the issue after two months.