Over 25,000 of the nearly one lakh overseas Indians who had registered themselves as voters flew down to India to exercise their franchise in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, according to data released by the Election Commission.
As many as 99,807 overseas Indians, who are living abroad and have not surrendered their citizenship, are in the voters’ lists of various States.The figure include 91,850 men, 7,943 women and 14 transgenders.
Out of the 25,606 who voted in the Parliamentary polls, 24,458 were men and 1,148 women.
In the national capital, 336 overseas Indians, including 231 men and 105 women, had registered as voters but none came to cast their votes, according to the EC data. The Union Territory of Puducherry also recorded a similar trend with none of the 272 overseas electors casting their votes in the General Elections this year.
In West Bengal too, where 34 overseas Indians were recorded in the State’s electoral rolls, none voted.
However, the case was entirely different in Kerala which has the maximum number of overseas Indians in the voters’ list as well as highest level of participation in the polls.
Kerala has 85,161 overseas Indians on its electoral rolls and 25,091 persons voted in the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year.
Overseas Indians are free to cast their votes in the constituencies they are registered.
According to Ministry of External Affairs estimates, there are about 3.10 crore Non Resident Indians (NRIs) living in different countries across the world.
An expert committee of the Election Commission had in 2015 forwarded the legal framework to the Law Ministry to amend the electoral laws to allow the overseas Indians to use proxy voting.
Not many overseas Indians turn up to cast their votes as they do not want to spend foreign currency to come to India for the purpose, officials said.