LAHORE, Feb 18: Flaws in voter lists and polling schemes, especially for women and minorities, affected the voting process at many polling booths in rural and urban areas of the Punjab capital on Monday.

Polling could not be started at many places owing to non-availability of voter lists and polling staff. At several places, presiding officers had to hire local people to start the process.

The places where the polling staff either did not reach or was late included the Government High School at Wagah, Government Girls Community Model School at Dyal village (NA-130), Laurel Public School near Daroogawala Chowk, Pakistan Mint, (NA-124), Government Islamia High School, Lahore Cantt, and Shaheera Foundation (NA-125).

At the Government High School, Wagah, 70-year-old Hasan Din (vote No 194, household No 454) said names of some 12 women of his family had been missing from the list.

Muhammad Arshad (vote No 332, household No 155) had been running from one polling station to another to find the names of the six women of his family for four hours or so.

However, 90-year-old Sher Muhammad and 82-year-old Budhay Khan said polling started late at women booths as voters’ list No 627 was missing. They said the list was received here at 10am from the Election Commission. Surprisingly, names of the women members of their families who had cast their votes in the last local body elections were missing from the list.

Presiding officer Aqeela Yousaf said she had to hire two girls from the nearby village to start polling at the Government Girls Community Model School at Dyal village.

“The headmistress was unaware that the polling station had been set up at the school. First we approached her at her Wagah residence, showed her the Election Commission’s letter and then she asked the watchman to hand over the campus to us,” said the presiding officer.

Both the polling staff and agents at the Government Girls High School at Jallo Mor had no women voters list No 515 till 1pm.

Policemen outside the Pakistan Mint, Madressah Ghausia Taleemul Quran and Madressahtul Bannat at Batapur, and the Government Najaf High School at Guru Mangat Road did not allow newsmen to go inside the polling stations because of the orders of their high-ups whom they would not name.

Most of the over 100 or so people belonging to the Christian community told this reporter outside the Laurel Public School that the names of the residents of Sardarpura, Mominpura, Siraj Park, Salamatpura and Dubai Park had been missing from the lists available with the polling agents sitting inside.

Barkat Ali, 79, was carrying the computerised identity cards of 25 women voters whose names were missing from the list.