New Delhi says ‘no decision made’ on voting rights for Indians in Gulf

NEW DELHI: The Indian government on Thursday said it has not yet decided whether citizens living in foreign countries will be allowed to vote in the upcoming regional elections.

The comment came days after a newspaper report claimed that those in Gulf countries would be denied the opportunity to cast ballots.

English-language daily the Indian Express reported on Tuesday that Indians citizens in several foreign countries — including the US, Canada, Australia, Germany and South Africa — will be granted voting rights, but those in the Gulf will not because the Foreign Ministry has “reservations” about the issue. The report said officials from the election commission and the ministry met last week to discuss the matter.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava neither confirmed nor denied the report, but told Arab News: “At this point in time no decision has been taken in this regard.”

India does not have postal-voting mechanisms in place. In November, however, the Election Commission proposed that the government should allow nationals living in other countries to cast ballots there during the upcoming regional elections in several states.

Following the newspaper report, Indians living in the Gulf said it feels like New Delhi is treating them as second-class citizens, even though they are the main source of foreign remittances.

“We are large in numbers and we contribute the maximum in terms of remittances,” said superstore manager Godugu Bhumesh, who has lived in Oman for 10 years.

“It hurts — are we not Indian citizens? Please tell me. Don’t we have Indian passports? Aren’t we sending money from the Gulf to India?”

Almost half of an estimated 20 million overseas Indians — officially known as non-resident Indians (NRIs) — live and work in six Gulf nations. In 2017, their remittances constituted about 53 percent of India’s total cash inflows of about $69 billion, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India.

“New Delhi thinks that the NRIs in the Gulf countries are poor laborers,” said Mohammed Abed, who lives in Dubai. “But the fact remains that remittances from our region are more than what (Indians in the) US and other countries send.”

Basant Reddy, a social activist from Telangana state who provides assistance to NRIs in the Middle East, said: “By denying them voting rights, the Indian government continues with its neglect of Indian workers in the Gulf.”

Professor Irudaya Rajan, of the Center for Development Studies in Trivandrum, Kerala, said: “I think the government must be thinking that managing people in the Gulf would be a problem because of their sheer numbers.”

It might be easier to manage voting among the smaller Indian populations in the UK, US and other countries, he added.

“Out of 20 million Indians abroad, approximately 10 million live in six countries in the Gulf,” Rajan said. “Another 10 million are living in 194 other countries. It is easier to manage those 194 countries than the six countries in the Gulf. This is a huge task — it’s an administrative challenge.”