LAHORE/ISLAMABAD, June 26: The Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N have filed separate petitions in the Supreme Court challenging the draft electoral rolls prepared by the Election Commission of Pakistan, both alleging irregularities in the process of registration.
Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday requesting the court to direct the Chief Election Commissioner to update the computerised electoral rolls by including names of all eligible voters as required under Article 51(2) of the Constitution.
Claiming that the new electoral rolls had disfranchised about one-third of eligible voters, she said the ruling party had started pre-poll rigging with a view to manipulating the general election.
Ms Bhutto submitted in the petition, moved through advocate Sardar Mohammad Lateef Khan Khosa, that in the electoral rolls prepared for the 2002 election, the number of registered voters was 71.8 million, but the new list had a little more than 52 million voters. This showed a “clear mala fide on the part of the regime headed by Gen Pervez Musharraf”, she said.
Ms Bhutto said the president was openly campaigning for the ruling party. Huge funds were being spent on projects proposed by the ruling party members, but development grants were being denied to opposition parliamentarians.
She requested the court to declare illegal and without lawful authority the registration of only those people as voters who had Computerised National Identity Cards issued by the National Database and Registration Authority.
The PPP chairperson also requested the Supreme Court to direct the Election Commission to provide copies of the new electoral rolls to all political parties free of cost and also place the lists on its website.
As for the intervening period, the petitioner requested the court to hold the new electoral rolls in abeyance.
She said that the electoral rolls had been prepared with the financial assistance of the USAID and the contract had been awarded to parties closely linked to the Punjab chief minister and the president of the ruling PML.
She said the PPP had communicated its reservations to the ECP at the very beginning, but nothing was done. It had been pointed out in writing to the ECP that only additions and exclusions should be made in the electoral rolls of 2002 and a completely substituted list of voters was not required. A new voters’ list was prepared only at the time of census, which was held every 10 years.
She said that the ECP had appointed enumerators all over the country for registering voters. In Sindh, teachers were on strike and there were also torrential rains. As such, she claimed, the job was assigned to the MQM in urban areas and to the Sindh chief minister in rural areas. She said both the parties had marginalised strongholds of the PPP in all constituencies and sliced away 4.7 million votes in 23 districts of the province. Even her constituency in Larkana was manipulated to bring down the number of voters from 601,200 existing in the electoral rolls for 2002 polls to 348,000, Ms Bhutto said.
She also alleged that 15 million voters had been axed in Punjab, mainly from the PPP strongholds. In Balochistan, she said, the number of voters had been shown much higher and claimed that Balochistan had seen an increase of 140 per cent of women voters and a 104 per cent of male voters.
The PML-N petition was filed in the Supreme Court, Islamabad, by the party’s youth wing coordinator, Barrister Zafarullah Khan. The petition requests the court to declare the draft electoral rolls illegal.
It said the draft electoral rolls were based on dishonest assessment and enumeration and million of voters had been excluded from the lists.
