AS THE hustings get louder in India, a group of non-resident Indians (NRI) in Singapore are attempting to have their say in the federal election process.

Consultant Kaushal Dugar and his friends Sandip Roy Choudhury and Sunil Patwari - Singapore-based alumni members of the St Xavier's College, Kolkata - feel that Indian citizens living and working overseas should have the right to vote.

Currently there is no mechanism that allows citizens outside the country to vote.

Said Mr Dugar: "Voting is a fundamental right. It's one of the rights for overseas Indians - an influential pool that carries India's standing all over the world - that connect us to India.

"Just the very fact that we cannot exercise this right if we live overseas slowly disengages us from having active interest in the development of the country."

And with India's technological developments, especially the introduction of electronic ballots, the group feels there is no reason that citizens should not participate in the electoral process by casting their vote over the Internet or at the High Commission.

Business analyst Sandip Roy Choudhury said: "Previously, voting was not electronic, so it was not possible logistically. Now that we have an electronic balloting system we are one step away from making it possible."

They have sent a letter to the Indian High Commissioner to Singapore Dr S. Jaishankar, requesting a meeting to "realistically explore the possibility of making (the) Singapore embassy, India's first embassy in allowing its overseas citizens to vote".

Businessman Sunil Patwari said: "We find Dr Jaishankar dynamic and we feel he can do it within his tenure here."

The group is not expecting to cast their votes immediately but rather set the ball in motion for it to happen in the next five years.

When contacted, the Indian High Commission said it has received the group's letter and is looking into the matter.

Other NRIs in Singapore reacted with surprise when told of this initiative.

Director of marketing firm Strat-Agile Avish Joseph told tabla! that this was the first time he had heard of such a move and thought it was "a good idea".

Assistant manager at the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Sridhar Monubol said it was a good move: "I would definitely like a chance to vote."

Mr Dugar and his friends are not alone in their pursuit for their right to vote.

An United States-based group that calls itself A2ZNRI has an online petition calling on the Indian president Pratibha Devisingh Patil to help make overseas voting available for NRIs.

They have also garnered the support of the Lok Satta Party president Jayaprakash Narayan for their movement. In his letter to his party, which was linked to the A2ZNRI website, Mr Narayan said: "In a changing world, political participation is increasingly delinked from territorial location."

Several countries like Singapore, Japan, Philippines, the US, UK, Australia, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Canada allow their citizens who live and work abroad to vote either by post, at the embassies or consulates or, as in France's case, through Internet voting.

While India does have postal voting, the specifics are unclear. According to the election rules, service personnel like the armed forces, policemen serving outside their state, diplomatic staff, government officials assigned to work outside their state during the elections can vote via the post.

People under preventive detention, migrants from Jammu and Kashmir, as well as Bru and Reang tribal migrants from Mizoram and Tripura are also allowed to vote through postal ballot.

The NRI voting rights issue is one that the Indian government has been keenly aware of for sometime. During the 2006 Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) in Hyderabad, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had promised that voting rights for NRIs would happen.

At this year's PBD event in Chennai, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said that technical problems have prevented 30 million NRIs from being able to vote.

"How to accommodate the NRIs also is the question and the matter is receiving the required attention," Mr Mukherjee added.