KARACHI, June 5: The Election Commission of Pakistan has announced that the fresh, computerised draft electoral rolls will be displayed from June 12 for public information, inviting claims, objections and applications for corrections for a period of 21 days from June 13 to July 3. The lists will be displayed in Urdu, Sindhi and English.
However, upon scrutiny of the available data of the draft rolls, compared with the voters’ lists of 2002, there seemed to be a discrepancy of 5,096,168 voters in Sindh (1,998,098 male and 3,098,070 female).
In the draft rolls the total number of voters in the province was shown as 11,327,485, while the 2002 voters’ list showed 16,423,653 voters.
When quizzed about such a vast difference in the two lists, the Election Commission authorities said that as the draft rolls were prepared on the basis of computerised national identity cards, the possibility of fake registration of voters had been eliminated.
However, the Chief Election Commissioner, Qazi Mohammad Farooq, has appealed to the eligible voters, who were not able to register during the door-to-door enumeration process, to avail the opportunity by filing their claims, objections and applications to ensure error-free electoral rolls.
Out of the total 45,403 centres being set up nationally to display the rolls, 11,047 will be located in Sindh, including 1,775 in Karachi district. Karachi West will have 325 display centres while there will be 357 in Karachi Central, 441 in Karachi East, 350 in Karachi South and 302 in Malir.
According to the chief election commissioner, 950 draft rolls’ revising authorities have been appointed throughout the country from amongst judicial officers with the consultation of the chief justices of the high courts.
The Election Commission Secretary, Kanwar Mohammad Dilshad, said that eligible voters will be facilitated through the preparation of banners, posters and leaflets to help them understand the process.
The details of the schedule for correction of draft electoral rolls are as under: publication and display of draft rolls: June 12, 2007; filing of claims, objections and applications for corrections: June 13 to July 7; disposal of claims by the revising authorities: July 4 to 13; picking up manuscript copies from the offices of the registration officers: July 16 to 23; while the data entry and printing of the final electoral rolls will be from July 26.
In the schedule the date for the publication of the final electoral rolls was not mentioned, which will be notified later.
