Saudi Arabia hosts the largest number of Indian expatriate workers in the Gulf with nearly 2.8 million distributed across the Kingdom working in various sectors.

Many of them are actively involved in issues related to their native country and take a keen interest in its political affairs.

For a long time, Indian expatriates in the Kingdom (non-resident Indians or NRIs) have been demanding to be allowed to vote in the elections back home.

Acceding to this demand, the Indian government in 2010 amended the Representation of People’s Act, 1951, allowing NRIs to vote.

However, the rules clearly state that NRIs have to be “physically present” with their passport on polling day in order to exercise their franchise.

However, less than one percent of the NRIs turned up to register their names as voters despite the Election Commission of India relaxing rules for NRIs by allowing them to self-attest a document which can be forwarded online. The general response from the Indian nationals in the Kingdom was dismal.

The Indian expatriate community from the southern states of India has been in the forefront demanding voting rights for NRIs, but they have not been as active in enrolling themselves as voters. “There are 450,229 expatriates from Kerala in the Kingdom but less than 3,000 have gotten themselves registered,” said Shihab Kottukad, a consultant for Kerala government entity. “I travel to India every year to cast my vote but not everyone is so lucky,” he said.

About 400,000 expatriates from Andhra Pradesh reside in Saudi Arabia, but again their response was very poor.

Kassim Irrikur, a Keralite journalist based in the Indian city of Calicut, said the huge presence of Malayalis in Saudi Arabia is not reflected in the number of voters who turned up to register themselves.

M.A. Fahim Sabri, a senior official of the Election Commission in Hyderabad, said that only two NRIs registered their names for the ongoing elections, but, ironically, they are not from Saudi Arabia or the GCC states.

Indian diplomat Surinder Bhagat confirmed that Indian nationals in the Kingdom do not seem to be interested in enrolling as voters.”

However they cannot be blamed for this entirely. Although the Indian Embassy in Riyadh and the Jeddah Consulate has been urging its eligible nations to register their names on the Election Commission’s website, the request has been largely ignored owing to the absence of an online balloting system.