BYLAKUPPE, India (AFP) — Tibetans outside Chinese control vote on Sunday for a government-in-exile, an election of heightened significance as they brace for an inevitable, eventual, future without their revered spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) — condemned by China as “nothing but a separatist political group” — is a key institution for the exiles, especially after the Dalai Lama handed over political power in 2011.

“Our votes matter,” said Tenzin Tsering, 19, a first-time voter waiting to cast his ballot to push for greater youth representation.

“We need voices that reflect where our community is going, not just where it has been,” he said, speaking in Bylakuppe in India’s southern state of Karnataka, one of the largest Tibetan communities outside the Himalayan plateau.

Polling is due to take place in 27 countries — but not China.

The 91,000 registered voters include Buddhist monks in the high Himalayas, political exiles in South Asia’s megacities and refugees in Australia, Europe and North America.

A farce

The five-year parliament, which sits twice a year, has 45 members from across the world: 30 representing three traditional provinces, 10 representing five religious traditions and five representing the diaspora.

Headquartered in Dharamsala in northern India, it functions as a representative body for an estimated 150,000 Tibetans living in exile worldwide.

Lines of red robed monks and nuns lined up to vote in the Indian hill town on Sunday.

The government’s “sikyong” or leader, Penpa Tsering, was elected for a second term on 1 February, after taking 61 percent in the preliminary round — a high enough threshold to win outright.

Exiled voters represent only a fraction of ethnic Tibetans — whom the CTA estimates at six million worldwide, compared with more than seven million China counted in its 2020 census.

Beijing, which in 1950 sent troops to the vast high-altitude plateau it calls an integral part of China, has condemned the elections as a “farce.”