 "voters")
Around three of every four overseas Indians, who have registered to vote, are from Kerala.
A state-wise analysis of data from the Election Commission of India (ECI) shows that 74.9 per cent of non-resident Indians (NRIs), who registered to vote, are from the state.
Kerala is followed by Andhra Pradesh at 6.4 per cent, Maharashtra at 4.7 per cent as well as Tamil Nadu and Telangana at 2.9 per cent each.
Overseas Indians, who registered to vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, have surpassed 118,000. This is a 65 per cent surge over the previous general elections in 2019.
About 12,000 overseas residents were registered as eligible voters in 2014.
The right to vote was extended to Indians living abroad in 2011 after an amendment to the Representation of People (Amendment) Act 2010. But they have to vote in person in their registered constituencies.
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Since an NRI’s name was deleted from the electoral roll after change in residency, they were ineligible to vote in the state and general elections prior to 2011.
Women accounted for 11 per cent of the NRI votes in 2024 compared to 6 per cent in 2014.
But the NRIs do not necessarily turn up to vote.
In the first general elections (2014), after they were given the right to vote, less than 1 per cent of those eligible actually voted.
While this increased to 26 per cent in 2019, the overall voting percentage of that election was 67.4 per cent.
Voting percentages differ state-wise as well. For instance, 29 per cent of the registered NRI voters in Kerala voted in 2019 compared to 4 per cent in Karnataka and 3 per cent each in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh.
However, NRIs had less than 0.1 per cent turnout in as many as 27 states and union territories, including Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Delhi, Gujarat, Assam, Uttarakhand and West Bengal, among others.
Hardly any overseas Indian votes in state elections. The nearly 80 million votes that were cast for the Rajasthan and Karnataka Assembly elections each in 2023 included just three NRI votes overall.
No NRI voted in the Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Telangana, Mizoram and Nagaland Assembly elections in the same year.
