ISLAMABAD, July 26: The Supreme Court has instructed the Election Commission of Pakistan to ensure the registration of the names of all eligible voters in the electoral rolls through a fresh and comprehensive scheme by convening a special meeting of the commission.
“The ECP should inform the president that the condition of the computerised national identity cards for registration in the electoral rolls is not only against the Constitution but also contrary to earlier orders of the Supreme Court,” observed a Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Rana Bhagwandas and Justice Ghulam Rabbani. The new voter lists would disenfranchise millions of people across the country, the bench observed while hearing a challenge by PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto against the draft rolls.
In her petition, Ms Bhutto had accused the government of committing ‘institutionalised fraud’ with the nation by deleting over 22 million voters from the electoral rolls.
At the last hearing, the court had summoned the Chief Election Commissioner, director-general of Nadra, law and parliamentary affairs secretaries and the attorney-general for Thursday.
Senators Farooq H. Naek and Sardar Latif Khosa pleaded the petition of Ms Bhutto in the court also attended by her media wizards Capt (retd) Wasif and Nazir Dhoki.
The lawyers contended that Article 51(2) of the Constitution, Section 6 of the Electoral Rolls Act, 1973, National Registration Act and Section 35 of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1976, ensured the right to vote to every Pakistani of the age of 18 years.
No statute imposed any precondition of having CNIC for registration in electoral rolls but the EC amended Rule 3 of the electoral rolls and imposed the condition of producing CNIC for registration as voters in the list against the spirit of the Constitution, law and judgements of superior courts, Sardar Khosa said.
In 1989, he recalled, the Lahore High Court had annulled the condition of producing NIC for casting vote, which had been upheld by a 12-member bench of the Supreme Court.
The voters’ lists used in the 2002 general elections carried about 72 million voters but only 52 million eligible voters were registered in the new lists though the population had increased considerably, he said.
At this, the chief justice said he would like to see whether his name was in the list or not.
When the court enquired from an official of the National Database and Registration Authority how many CNICs had been issued, he said 51 per cent of women and 81 per cent of men had been issued CNICs.
It meant that 19 per cent men and about 50 per cent women had no right to register as voters, the chief justice said, asking how the condition of CNIC could be imposed for registration of votes when it had not been issued to every one.
The bench directed officials of the ECP to examine the rules related to identity card at the time of registration of votes and amend the rules, if needed, to give millions of people the right to vote.
The Election Commission should initiate a fresh exercise to enrol voters whose names were missing in the draft rolls, the bench observed.
Deputy Attorney-General Raja Irshad said that in his opinion the condition of NIC for registration as voter was unconstitutional and illegal.
Election Commission’s deputy secretary Iftikhar Shah said the commission would have to move a summary seeking an amendment to the rules.
The chief justice directed the commission to evolve a mechanism to ensure inclusion of missing names in the voters’ lists and sought a detailed report from the EC on Aug 10.
Later, talking to journalists, Farooq Naek, Sardar Khosa and MPA Shafqat Abbasi demanded appointment of an independent chief election commissioner because the incumbent CEC had failed to perform independently.
Sardar Khosa said that in 23 districts of Sindh, 4.7 million voters had not been registered and only in the constituency of Benazir Bhutto in Larkana, 239,000 votes had been omitted.
During door-to-door enumeration campaign of the Election Commission, teachers of Sindh were on strike and the task of enumeration was given to agents of the government who did not ensure the registration of opposition members, he said.
