Kerala election panel says no to e-voting in civic polls
trivandrum — Keralites living abroad may not be able to vote in the upcoming local body polls in Kerala from their foreign locations.
The State Election Commission (SEC) has expressed its inability to complete the legal formalities and technical processes for introducing e-voting for nearly two million non-resident Keralites (NRKs) before the elections due in October this year.
The commission on Friday conveyed its decision to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and nonresident Keralites Affairs Minister K C Joseph. The commission was asked to make arrangements for online voting as per the cabinet decision last week.
A commission spokesman said that the panel had examined all aspects of the e-voting in detail and came to the conclusion that it won’t be practical for them to make fool-proof arrangements for the voting within the next two months.
Election Commissioner K. Sasidharan Nair had also held talks with the officials of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) on the technical aspects of online voting. National Informatics Officer T Mohana Das had also felt two months were not sufficient to develop the required technical infrastructure.
They will have to develop exclusive software for the purpose and conduct trial runs before the polls. To make matters further difficult, the NIC has no model to emulate or modify. Gujarat was the only state to experiment online voting. However, the experiment was found unsuccessful.
The commission also feels that the enrolment of voters for online voting would be a time consuming affair since they have to verify and approve each applicant. Though only about 12,000 NRKs have registered their names as voters so far, the commission feels many more would come forward once the online registration is made available for enrolment.
The last date for inclusion of name in the voters’ list for the local body polls is July 31. If the commission provides online voting facility to NRKs it will have to give at least one month’s time to them for enrolling their names. It will not be able to verify and include their names in the voters list within the remaining one month.
Legislative backing for online voting is also not in place. The amendments made in the Kerala Panchayati Raj Act and the Kerala Municipalities Act allows the NRKs only to enrol as voters. Further amendments in the Acts are required to provide for e-voting.
As per the current laws, the NRKs would have to be present in the polling booth to cast their vote. The commission also needs to evolve a consensus among political parties before introducing e-voting.
An all-party meeting convened by the Chief Minister could not arrive at a consensus with the opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) opposing proxy and expressing reservations over online voting.
non-resident Keralites have registered their
names as voters so far