Less than a quarter of overseas voters cast vote in last Lok Sabha polls

CHENNAI: Only less than one-fourth of the 99,807 registered overseas voters (ROVs) had exercised their franchise in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Kerala overwhelmingly led the list, with 25,534 ROVs casting their votes out of the total 25,606, who actually turned up to vote across India.
The low turnout of ROVs is due to the fact that they have to come to their respective constituencies to cast their votes on the day of polling.Even in the case of Kerala, only 30% of its total ROVs had turned up to vote.
MA Yusuff Ali, one of the world’s richest Malayalis and managing director of Lulu Group International, took time off to cast his vote in his native Nattika in Kerala. Ali, who had migrated from his native village in the early 70s to Abu Dhabi, flew in on the polling day and stood in the queue to cast his vote.
Some of the ROVs had combined their holiday trips to their native places with the poll timeframe to get a chance to cast their votes. In several other states, not a single overseas voter had exercised his/her franchise.
In Punjab, 33 ROVs exercised their franchise out of 1,523. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Chandigarh are a few other states and Union Territories, where some of the ROVs had exercised their franchise.
While overseas Indians are free to vote in their constituencies, where their names are registered, a bill is pending in Parliament to allow them the option of proxy voting.