Kerala expats charter special flight to be part of poll

KOZHIKODE: The poll fever seems to have crossed the seas and set in early among the state’s expats in the Gulf. Eager to join into the election preparations, Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre, an organisation of expats aligned to IUML, has booked a chartered flight to fly down their volunteers and voters from Dubai for the polls. The Air India chartered flight christened “Voter’s Flight” will arrive at Karipur Airport on April 7.
Home to around one million expats from Kerala, the UAE is all set to experience the effects of the elections, with expat organizations planning mass SMS and social network campaigns in the run-up to the polls.
“In addition to the chartered flight, another 2,000 KMCC activists will also fly home to cast their votes and take part in the UDF campaign in Malabar,” president of Dubai KMCC, PK Anwar Naha, said. He added that they opted to charter a flight as there could be huge rush for flight tickets in the days before the polling date.
“Expats play a crucial role in determining the election results in Malabar. Over the next one month, we will be holding SMS, Facebook and social network campaigns among the NRKs in the UAE. The aim would be to reach out to the bread winners of tens of thousands of families back home, who will be able to influence how their family members and relatives cast their votes,” he said.
Cultural organizations like Overseas Indian Cultural Congress and activists associated with a host of other organizations affiliated to CPM have been active in taking out the campaigns. They have been taking care not to carry out political campaigns openly which is not allowed under the law.
Fazlu Rahman, a journalist at HIT FM, a Malayalam radio station in Dubai, said though away from home, election were fought fervently in the UAE through discussions on special election radio talk shows in the seven Malayalam radio stations.
This is the first general elections after the government allowed voting rights to NRIs through an amendment of the Representation of the People Bill in 2010.