E voting

108. The Central Government may prescribe the class or classes of companies and manner in which a member may exercise his right to vote by the electronic means.

Rule 7.18(1), states that every listed company or a company having five hundreds or more shareholders may provide to its members facility to exercise their right to vote at general meetings by electronic means. (2) A member may exercise his right to vote at any general meeting by electronic means and company may pass any resolution by electronic voting system in accordance with the provisions of this rule.

 ‘voting by electronic means’ or ‘electronic voting system’ means a ‘secured system’ based process of display of electronic ballots, recording of votes of the members and the number of votes polled in favour or against, such that the entire voting exercised by way of electronic means gets registered and counted in an electronic registry in a centralized server with adequate ‘cyber security’.

 (3) A company which opts to provide the facility to its members to exercise their votes at any general meeting by electronic voting system shall follow the following procedure:

(i) The notices of the meeting shall be sent to all the members/ auditors of accompany/directors/key managerial personal either, -

(a) By Registered Post or speed post with AD, or

(b) Through electronic means like registered e-mail id etc, in accordance with the provisions of section 101.

 (xvi) Words and expressions used in this rule but not defined shall, unless the context otherwise requires, bear the meaning, if any, as assigned to them under the Act and Information Technology Act, 2000.