Congress holds meeting on ECI proposal of remote voting

New Delhi: The Congress held a meeting on Thursday on the Election Commission proposal of voting rights to migrants. The ECI has called a meeting of political parties on Monday.

Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh, Jairam Ramesh and others deliberated on the issue over which the Congress has raised serious objections. Digvijaya Singh after the meeting said, "Where has the EC got the figure of 3 crore migrant labourers."

The Election Commission of India in December had said that it is ready to pilot remote voting for domestic migrants, and the migrant voters need not travel to their home states to vote.

The ECI has developed a prototype Multi-Constituency Remote Electronic Voting Machine and has invited political parties for a demonstration of the prototype.

The prototype RVM can handle multiple constituencies from a single remote polling booth.

"The migration based disenfranchisement is indeed not an option in the age of technological advancement. The voter turnout in General Elections 2019 was 67.4 per cent and the Election Commission of India is concerned about the issue of over 30 crore electors not exercising their franchise and also differential voter turnout in various states/UTs," the commission had said.

The ECI said that there are multifarious reasons for a voter not opting to register in a new place of residence, thus missing out on exercising the right to vote.