KV Prasad

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 11

The growing demand for inclusion of alternative methods of voting other than proxy and postal ballots for defence personnel would be taken up for examination by a parliamentary panel this week even as there is little movement on such a facility for NRIs.The committee, headed by Garhwal MP Maj Gen (Retd) Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri, is scheduled to hear evidence from the representatives of the Ministries of Defence, Law and Justice and Election Commission on the issue of e-postal ballots, a proposal mooted a couple of years ago for the benefit of NRIs.While evaluating the existing facility of postal ballots and proxy voting, the panel decided to examine the proposal for NRIs that among other things envisages reaching the ballot paper through electronic mail, of which a registered voter can take a printout only once and then submit it to Indian mission.The Election Commission had set up a committee, which submitted a report in October 2014 exploring the feasibility of alternative options for voting by overseas electors. Commenting that the existing system of postal ballots is both time consuming and cumbersome, the committee said a one-way electronic postal ballot with some safeguards like secrecy, privacy and accuracy of vote, protected by passwords, containing unique barcode/QR code with watermark and unique ID generated through customised random algorithm could be a way out. After prolonged discussion, armed forces personnel are now allowed to cast their votes either through postal ballots or a proxy following due process established by the poll panel.