Many NRIs have old or outdated addresses recorded in India; others might have shifted homes or not renewed their Electoral Photo Identity Cards.
Published Nov 01, 2025 | 4:00 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 01, 2025 | 4:00 PM
Many expatriate families fear that the verification exercise could lead to the exclusion of voters temporarily residing abroad or those whose addresses have changed due to migration.
Synopsis: In regions like Kerala and Lakshadweep, where Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and migrants form the backbone of social and economic life, this ”clean-up” raises troubling questions. Can a process meant to strengthen democracy end up excluding those who have built their lives across borders yet remain deeply tied to home?
As the partition divided the subcontinent, displacing millions between 1947 and 1950, the nation’s founding fathers quietly undertook a revolutionary task: compiling the first electoral roll that treated every Indian adult, regardless of caste, gender, or wealth, as an equal voter.
Now, decades later, the country finds itself in the midst of another massive exercise — the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has launched the second phase of SIR across 12 states and Union Territories, including Kerala and Lakshadweep, after a gap of 21 years. Officially, the goal is to ”clean up” the electoral rolls, to include every eligible voter and remove those deemed ineligible.
However, in regions like Kerala and Lakshadweep, where Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and migrants form the backbone of social and economic life, this ”clean-up” raises troubling questions. Can a process meant to strengthen democracy end up excluding those who have built their lives across borders yet remain deeply tied to home?
Sadly, many fear that Kerala’s NRIs and migrant families may become the first casualties of this new regime of suspicion.
The SIR of electoral rolls entered a crucial phase in Kerala this week. Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Rathan U Kelkar held a meeting with all District Collectors, who also serve as District Electoral Officers, to review preparations for the revision drive.
Ahead of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll, training sessions for Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are being conducted across the state.
The meeting finalised key steps to ensure accuracy and inclusivity in the process, triggering anxiety among Kerala’s large non-resident population.
According to the Kerala Migration Survey-2023, the number of emigrants from the state is estimated to be 2.2 million.
Many expatriate families fear that the ECI’s verification exercise could lead to the exclusion of voters temporarily residing abroad or those whose addresses have changed due to migration.
According to officials, the house-to-house enumeration would begin on 4 November and continue until 4 December, followed by the publishing of draft electoral rolls on 9 December, and the final rolls on 7 February 2026.
Kelkar said that a preliminary digital matching between the 2002 and 2025 voter lists showed a 68% match, meaning that most existing voters would remain unaffected at this stage.
”Every eligible voter will be included, and exclusions will only happen after detailed verification of duplications, deaths, or address changes,” he told officials.
The CEO also announced the appointment of 6,300 additional Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to assist in field-level coordination. Each BLO would distribute pre-printed enumeration forms to voters as of 27 October, without requiring them to produce documents. The verification and hearing process would begin only after publishing the draft list.
To make the process more accessible, the CEO directed the setting up of Help Desks in every district to assist voters — particularly guest workers, migrant families, and NRIs — with enrolment, corrections, or revalidation of entries.
The state also launched an SIR Ambassadors programme through Electoral Literacy Clubs in schools and colleges to promote awareness about voter registration.
Kelkar also met representatives of all major political parties to address mounting criticism against the ECI’s decision to proceed with SIR despite the state’s preparations for the imminent local body elections.
Though the ECI claimed that the SIR is a routine, technical exercise, opposition parties across the country questioned its timing, intent and execution.
During the meeting, parties across the political spectrum expressed concerns that the rapid rollout could disenfranchise migrant workers and expatriate Keralites whose names figured on the rolls but could not be physically present during verification.
Kelkar assured the parties that the revision would be carried out transparently and all concerns would be ”duly addressed through regular review meetings”.
He clarified that the ongoing phase was limited to enumeration — distributing forms and updating basic details — and that no deletions or document verifications would take place until after the draft rolls were published in December.
Meanwhile, political tensions continued to rise over the SIR process.
Both the CPI(M) and the Congress accused the ECI of acting on political motives, while the BJP supported the revision, calling it a step toward transparency.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced that the state would convene an all-party meeting on 5 November to discuss the matter, describing the ECI’s move as one that ”poses a challenge to the democratic process”.
Mansoor Palloor, the Middle East Convenor of the Overseas Congress Department, expressed deep concern over how the SIR could impact expatriate voters.
According to him, the foremost fear among NRIs is the possibility of being unfairly removed from the electoral rolls. Since BLO’s conduct in-person home visits for verification, non-resident Indians—who live abroad—have no direct way to interact with them.
They would also miss official forms, notices, and deadlines, which often fail to reach them on time, leaving them unable to respond within the required timeframe.
He explained that the revision would not be a simple re-verification, but a comprehensive, document-based inspection of every household. For those living overseas, participating in this process would be nearly impossible.
Many NRIs have old or outdated addresses recorded in India; others might have shifted homes or not renewed their Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPICs).
Local officials often cannot reach them. Additionally, a lack of clarity over the acceptable documents persists.
All these factors, he warned, created a real risk of NRIs being struck off the voter rolls, despite being legally eligible. The lack of timely and effective communication poses a huge structural problem.
Despite existing digital alternatives, the SIR process continues to depend largely on postal correspondence and physical verification, leaving overseas voters powerless to act.
While speaking to South First, Mansoor emphasised that the current situation is not just an administrative lapse but a democratic crisis, as the expatriate community—an integral part of the economy—faces the danger of complete disenfranchisement.
To safeguard their rights, the expatriate community has urged the ECI to initiate several steps. They called for uniform guidelines to standardise voter verification procedures across all states, along with the introduction of a secure online system that allows NRIs to complete verification remotely.
They also emphasised the need for prompt communication, ensuring that all notifications and updates reach voters electronically without delay. Transparency in the verification and removal process is another major demand, with expatriates seeking clear and accountable procedures.
Additionally, they sought the establishment of a strong online grievance redressal system to handle voter complaints and make corrections efficiently.
He added that the ECI’s is constitutionally bound to ensure that no eligible citizen is excluded from the voter list. The strength of India’s democracy, he noted, lies not in the existence of the roll itself, but in the participation of every citizen—wherever they are in the world.
The concern over voter exclusion extends far beyond just NRIs. It also affects Keralites who have migrated to other parts of India and women who have relocated after marriage.
Santhosh Kumar PP, hailing from Kottayam, has been working in Mumbai for decades.
”Even though I work in Mumbai, I have every right to cast my vote back home. I always make it a point to travel to Kerala during elections. I even plan my leave around elections. But now I’m worried my name may be removed from the list. No election official from my panchayat has contacted me yet,” he told South First.
His concern reflected the predicament of millions of internal migrants who move across cities to earn their livelihood, many without a permanent address or documents in their name.
Many married women face the same problem. They have to deal with a lot of paperwork and delays when updating their voter details after moving to a new place.
For lakhs of Keralites living abroad, the uncertainty surrounding the revision has become deeply personal.
Nagender Chindam and Dr. Shamsheer Vayalil
Many fear that the absence of a clear digital re-verification mechanism could lead to the deletion of NRI voters, who already face bureaucratic hurdles in maintaining their registration.
As the SIR exercise moves forward, Kerala’s political and expatriate communities remain on edge — torn between promises of transparency and fears of exclusion.
Many countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia, allow their overseas citizens to participate in elections through embassy voting or postal ballots. However, India has yet to implement such a system for its overseas citizens.
A key advocate for NRI voting rights is Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, a radiologist and entrepreneur based in the UAE and a native of Kozhikode.
In 2014, he filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court, urging the government to enable NRIs to vote from abroad. His petition, along with one by Nagender Chindam of Pravasi Bharat, prompted the court to direct the ECI and the government to explore feasible solutions.
Following this, the ECI recommended allowing NRIs to vote through proxy or e-postal ballots. Although the government repeatedly assured the court that the matter was under active consideration, progress has been slow.
The Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2017, which proposed proxy voting for NRIs, was passed in the Lok Sabha in 2018 but lapsed before it could be cleared by the Rajya Sabha.
Even after nearly 10 years of talk, NRIs still have to fly all the way to India just to cast their vote. Postal, proxy, or online voting? Still stuck in discussion mode, the government and Election Commission seem in no hurry to turn words into action.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
