Parliamentary panel head urges government to act fast

The head of a parliamentary panel told Gulf News on Sunday that the Indian government could have acted more expeditiously to implement NRI voting rights. “It has been rather slow in bringing new legislation to parliament generally,” said Dr Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament and chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs.

Asked about the possibility of tabling the legal amendment bill in the current parliament session, he said: “The government can make the necessary legal amendment as quickly as they like since it is up to the government to introduce such a bill in parliament.”

Tharoor, a member of opposition Congress party, revealed that the matter has not been brought so far to the parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. “Ironically, it was I, as an NRI, who first suggested both dual citizenship and NRI voting rights in my speech at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Mumbai more than a decade ago,” he said.

Asked about the reported e-postal ballot, Tharoor said the suggested procedure seems somewhat laborious and complicated.

As Gulf News reported, the available information suggested that it is a password-protected electronic ballot paper that will be emailed to an NRI voter’s registered email ID. A one-time password will be sent to the voter’s registered mobile number, with which the voter can download the ballot paper and an envelope. After casting the vote, the voter has to send the ballot paper in the given envelope back to India by post, or any other prescribed mode. Any tampering with the envelope will make the vote invalid. There is a proposal to involve the Indian Ministry of External Affairs in the process so that diplomatic missions abroad can receive the sealed postal ballots from NRI voters and send them to India in diplomatic bags. This will prevent tampering with the sealed ballots.

Dr Tharoor commented: “However, I appreciate the need to balance ease of voting with security measures to prevent tampering. I await the government’s and Election Commission’s explanation for the chosen method,” he said.

A Gulf News request for comments from the Indian Ministry of Law and Justice, the Election Commission of India and a ruling BJP MP, who is also a member of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, did not get any response until press time.