ISLAMABAD: Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, the acting Chief Election Commissioner, does not feel that local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have to wait for the introduction of electronic voting machines in the country.

Justice Jamali told a meeting of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) here on Friday that absence of modern facilities for voting should not become a reason for delaying elections.

He directed his secretariat to inform the Supreme Court again that the ECP was ready to conduct the LG polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa towards the end of March 2015, without the help of biometric machines.

A participant of the meeting, held to discuss matters relating to LG polls in the province, said the acting CEC noted that census has long been overdue but that did not prevent the holding of general elections in the country. The PTI government of the province has reportedly been insisting on the biometric machines which verify voters by their thumb impression.

An estimated 50,000 biometric machines are required for LG polls in KP and will cost about Rs1.5 billion.

A KP government representative, who said that the electoral law had been amended to provide for biometric verification of voter by the presiding officer, was reminded that there was still room for the conventional method in the law. The provincial government agreed to submit amended rules for conducting the LG polls to the ECP in the next three days.

According to sources Justice Jamali said that the electoral process at the lowest tier must not be delayed anymore and that the Election Commission cannot be blamed for the delay suffered so far.

Acting Chairman National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) Imtiaz Tajwar told the meeting that Nadra is willing to provide to ECP the data of thumb impressions of voters but cannot hand it over to private vendors for security reasons.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2014