Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot (ETPB)

IN NEWS:

• While addressing a group of trainee Indian Foreign Service officers, Chief Election Commissioner said the time had come for the Election Commission to facilitate postal voting for Non-Resident Indians.

ELECTRONICALLY TRANSMITTED POSTAL BALLOT (ETPB):

• ETPB System has been developed by ECI with the help of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), for the use of Service Voters.

• This system enables the entitled service voters to cast their vote using an electronically received postal ballot from anywhere outside their constituency.
• The details of the concerned service voters are auto-filled in the ETPB. OTP is required to download encrypted ETPB file. Secrecy is maintained and no duplication of casted Vote is possible due to the QR Code.
• Voters can register their mandate on the downloaded ETPB and send it to the returning officer of the constituency.

EXISTING SYSTEM FOR NRIs:

• Voting rights for NRIs were introduced only in 2011, through an amendment to the Representation of the People Act 1950.
• Currently, the ECI allows enrolled overseas citizens to vote in person at the polling station in the constituency where the person is registered as an overseas elector.
• An NRI will have to produce the passport in original at the polling station for establishing identity.
• As per the government, total number of overseas voters on January 1, 2023 stood at over 1.15 lakh.

NEED OF ETPB FOR NRIs:

• Widen the Indian democratic base:
  • Several democratic countries allow for the option for their overseas citizens. India has one of the largest diaspora populations, with nearly 1.35 crore non-resident Indians spread across the globe. Making voting more accessible for them would uphold the value of Indian democracy.
• Reduce the 'cost to vote':
  • For overseas citizens, the necessity to vote in person and the costs have acted as a disincentive for their wanting to exercise their mandate. ETPB can avoid this expense. 
• More trustworthy:
  • ETPBS is a more trustworthy way of registering mandates rather than appointing proxies which is currently allowed for service personnel.

PREVIOUS EFFORTS:

• A 12-member committee was set up after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections to study mainly three options: voting by post, voting at an Indian mission abroad and online voting.
  • The committee ruled out online polling as it felt this could compromise “secrecy of voting”.
  • It ruled out the proposal to vote at Indian missions abroad as they do not have adequate resources.
  • It concluded that proxy voting was the most viable, though some political parties objected to the idea.
• A Bill was passed in the 16th Lok Sabha (2014-19) to enable this but lapsed.
• In 2020, the ECI approached the Government to permit NRIs to vote via postal ballots, similar to the system already used by service voters, i.e., the ETPBS.

WAY FORWARD:

Adoption of technology driven methodology like ETPB system to widen the political participation is a natural next step for Indian democracy. However, while extending such facilities, several challenges need to be addressed.   

• Size of Indian democracy:
  • Several democratic countries allow for this option to their overseas citizens, but again, none has to deal with anything near the scale India has.
• Question of internal migrants:
  • While extending the facility of voting to overseas Indians, the question of whether migrants within the country should also be allowed the same remains.
• Formulation of rules:
  • If the postal ballot system is indeed instituted, rules must be clearly framed for voters’ eligibility on the basis of their time spent away from the country.
• Capacity building:
  •  The capacity within the country (digital infrastructure) and outside it (embassies and missions) needs to be upgraded to effectively implement to the ETPB System.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Q. What is Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot system? Analyse the demand for extending ETPB to overseas Indians.