India boasts of being the world’s largest democracy with 1.27 billion population. Conducting the elections in a country that large is a challenging and complicated process for the sheer scale, size, diversity and complexity. Equally challenging is to reach out and create awareness not only among 835 million people that can vote in India but also over 12 million NRIs out of 28 million Indians living overseas. The overseas Indian population are now participating actively in India’s growth and development.
It is therefore timely that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is examining the feasibility of extending voting rights to overseas electors through E-postal ballot or proxy voting.
Simultaneously, initiatives are being taken up under ECI’s Systematic Voter’s Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme to reach out to the Non Resident Indians to facilitate their registration in the electoral roll.
In line with this commitment, the Commission has recently launched the online service for the citizens called the National Voters’ Service Portal (NVSP) to facilitate Indian citizens. The NSVP portal is of immense use to the Non-Resident Indians as the portal provides online registration facility besides all other services related to electoral registration, i.e. correcting entries or change in address, searching name on electoral roll. The NVSP portal can be found at the following link: www.nvsp.in
The High Commission of India is encouraging all NRIs to utilize the opportunity to register online on the electoral roll or update their details on the NVSP website. A link for the portal has also been placed on the website of the High Commission at www.hicomind.org.nz