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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Migrant vote alert

Migrant vote alert

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published Published on Nov 2, 2015   modified Modified on Nov 2, 2015
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The Election Commission has informed the Supreme Court that it may not be feasible to let domestic migrants vote from wherever they have shifted to as such a step would be "fraught with risks".

The poll panel, which submitted an interim report on Friday, contended that diluting the residential criteria might open the gates for manipulation and compromise the "purity of electoral rolls".

The report came in response to a PIL seeking a directive to ensure that migrant workers in the country be allowed to vote from wherever they have migrated to in search of livelihood.

The poll panel said the "integrity" of the electoral process was "inextricably linked with (the) purity of electoral rolls".

"Roll management" was based on "enrolling eligible voters residing within the territorial limits" of a constituency and "deleting those who are dead, (have) shifted or (are) absent", it added.

If migrants are allowed to vote from where they are based, it could "adversely impact on both the authenticity of (the) rolls and the accountability mechanism to ensure the same".

Senior counsel Meenakshi Arora, who appeared for the commission while placing the interim report before a bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Amitava Roy, sought three more months to submit the final report.

Under existing rules, a person who is enrolled as a voter in, say, Odisha, but has migrated to, say, Uttar Pradesh cannot vote in the northern state because he is already enrolled as a voter in another state.

The PIL originally dealt with voting rights of NRIs. But it widened its scope to include domestic migrants so that this vast segment of mobile workers was not deprived of a constitutional right.

At an earlier hearing, the court had agreed to consider this plea and sought a response from the commission.

Arora said the commission had set up an in-house panel to look into how domestic migrants, who live away from their hometown, could vote. But the proposal was not feasible as dilution of the residential criteria might lead to manipulation, with political parties and candidates enrolling supporters spread across the country, thereby vitiating the composition of electors within a constituency.

"This may be particularly true of smaller constituencies," the commission said.

The commission, however, said it would ask the recognised political parties for their opinion before taking a final view.

The Telegraph, 2 November, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151102/jsp/nation/story_50976.jsp#.Vjcz7Cs1t_k


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