Thursday, February 24, 2011

NRI Registration for voting rights in India


I've heard PM announcing voting registration for NRI's last month. I've searched in Google on the procedures but couldn't find. Finally I managed to find a document in ECI (Electoral Commision Of India) and the summary is below.

Form 6A (Here). You need to fill the Form 6A, with one passport size photograph, passport copies,

Eligibility:

* Every citizen of India staying in a foreign country, who has not acquired citizenship of a country and older than 18 years
* Submit to the Electoral Registration Office (ERO) of the constituancy by Hand or by Post
* Photocopies of passport should be attested by Official in the Indian Mission

In my opinion, the process is designed to be simple but made complicated by the 'attestation' stuff. Atleast in my experience (in Singapore, US, UK) the attestation process itself takes you to physically godown to the consulate or embassy and waste a couple of 'leave days'. If they could use existing identifications/verification instead of attestation it'd make things much more easier.

For example they can use PAN Card to check information cross check and even offer the registration electronically. This is where I see Indian government need to improve a lot. They've the information but most of the times Gov still asks the requester for information and let them go through the bureaucracy which result in excessive work or some occasions corruption.

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