Overseas voters nearly double

KOZHIKODE: More than 22,000 expats have registered with the election commission to cast their votes in assembly elections, a near 90% increase from the 2014 Parliamentary election figures.
The state had 12,585 overseas electors for the Lok Sabha elections which accounted for 96.5% of the total overseas electorate of 13,039 in the country .
“There are 22,933 overseas electors in the state as on April 25.There are 21,323 male and 1,610 female voters,“ an election commission official said.
The special voter registration drives in Gulf countries by expat organizations drove the figures this time. Also, around a dozen candidates have already taken their campaigns to the Middle East.
It, however, remains to be seen as to how many of these voters would fly home to participate in elections due to the high travel costs involved and in view of the current uncertain economic situation in many Gulf countries. Even in 2014 parliament elections, the number of expats, who had cast their votes, was low.
Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC), the expat arm of IUML, has taken up an initiative to fly down non-resident Keralites from May 14. KMCC had registered as many as 1,200 voters in special registration drives over the past two months in the UAE. “Over 250 expats had registered with us to fly home for elections. We are arranging tickets for them in various flights. The first Air India flight carrying expat voters will reach Karipur on May 14,“ said P K Anwar Naha, president of KMCC in Dubai.
IUML's Kuttiady candidate Parakkal Abdulla, himself an expatriate having businesses in Qatar, said as many as 1,500 NRKs from Qatar had registered as voters. “I think many of them would be able to participate in the electoral process,“ Abdulla said. Though NRIs were granted voting rights in 2010, the current rules require them to be present in the constituency on polling day, which prevented many from registering their names.
Advocate Haris Beeran, who had appeared in the Supreme Court on the case filed by Dr Shamsheer Vayalil seeking overseas voting rights, said the voting rights for expats would become meaningful only if NRKs are allowed to cast their votes overseas through the current proposal of electronic postal ballots.