KARACHI, Jan 9: The Election Commission of Pakistan’s door-to-door verification of the electoral rolls will begin simultaneously in all five districts of Karachi on Thursday, continuing till Feb 1.

The trained staff of the ECP will be guarded by personnel of the security agencies, including the army.

The election staff will complete the work without any vacation and will ensure verification of voter lists even if they have to pay a number of visits to the voters’ residences.

This was stated by Sindh election commissioner Mehboob Anwar at a press conference at the ECP office here on Wednesday evening.

He appealed to all stakeholders, citizens of Karachi and civil society to cooperate with the ECP staff, saying that without their cooperation the work could not be completed on time.

For eliminating the possibility of any anomaly in the verified voter lists, Karachi has been divided into 13,622 enumerating blocks having 6,926,301 voters in the updated lists.

Accompanied by regional election commissioner Tanveer Zaki, additional commissioner Kamran Shamshad, Karachi police spokesman Imran Shaukat and other officials concerned, the provincial election commissioner highlighted the procedure for the verification of the electoral rolls.

He said at first house enumeration would be completed in which verification staff would write down the family number of his allocated enumerating blocks and would fill in the form by writing the name of the head of the family and his CNIC number.

He would also prepare a list of house enumeration mentioning house number, name of the family head with complete address and number of persons aged 18 and above and possessing computerised national identity card (CNIC).

The voters themselves or any other member of the family could verify the particulars, he added.

A copy of the list thus prepared would be forwarded to the district election commissioner so that it could be forwarded to the provincial election commissioner and the election commission in Islamabad.

The verification staff after preparing a list of his verified block with the house enumeration would send it through his supervisor to the assistant registration officer (ARO) concerned, who would send it to the registration officer (RO), who would prepare a consolidated statement to forward it to the provincial election commissioner.

If any voter liked to verify his or her particulars, they would sign in the opposite column of verification as personally verifying the particulars. And the verifying person of the particulars of the voters would put his thumb impression along the CNIC number in the column, mentioning the new house number recorded during house enumeration. If any member liked to verify particulars of any other persons of the family, they would follow the prescribed route, he said.

Even on the last day of verification, if any voter’s name was not verified, the verifier would put a tick mark in the voters column and the verifier in the electoral list provided to him should also check the list of enrolled voters after Aug 1, 2012 by the National Database and Registration Authority.

If in the electoral list some voter is left out, or after receiving the CNIC had become eligible to vote, the verifier would get Form Alif filled in and get his/her signature and thumb impression on the form. The verifier would ensure that the person filling in the form was writing the same address where he was filling it.And if in the electoral list names of all family members had to be enrolled as voters, the verifier would ask the head of the family or who is eligible to become voter to fill Form 2 and if the verifier came to know from the family that a member whose name was in the voters list had died, the verifier would get Form Bay filled and get his thumb impression and signature on the form. If the death certificate was available, its copy would be attached with the form.

Similarly if the voter wanted to correct his address, the verifier would write the correct address of the voter on the top of the list and register it in column Jeem.

The election commission has made arrangements that when staff would be verifying the voters, an additional copy of the electoral list would be displayed in the offices of the AROs, where anyone who could not get his name verified during the door-to-door verification due to any reason could get their names verified at the nearest display center.

The election commissioner said the AROs would work like the backbone of the entire verification procedure as their offices had central position for verification of voters. They would also supervise the entire work and the verifier and supervisor would work under the ARO. The AROs after writing down the proceedings of the entire day would deliver it to the relevant RO and this process would continue till the completion of the exercise. ARO offices would also act like display centres of the electoral lists so that if any voters for any reason was not available to the verifier, he could go to the ARO offices for verifying his name.

According to the updated voter lists, in Karachi the total voters are 6,926,301, including 2,974,983 female voters.

For the verification of voter lists, there are five registration officers, 197 assistant registration officers, 3,216 supervisors and 11,300 verification staff members.

Giving district-wise details of voter lists and the EC staff deployed for verification, Mr Anwar said besides one registration officer in each district in Karachi East, there were 43 assistant registration officers, 708 supervisors and 2,793 verification staffers.

In District West, where the total voters were 1,427,740, including 565,685 females, 43 AROs, 648 supervisors and 2,460 verification supervisors (VS) had been assigned the job. In District South with 1,078,335 voters, including 469,626 females, there were 42 AROs, 615 supervisors and 1,873 VS.

In District Central for the 1,630,585 voters, including 722,674 females, there were 42 AROs, 845 supervisors and 2,769 VS. In District Malir with a total of 735,998 voters, including 304,435 females, there were 27 AROs, 400 supervisors and 1,405 VS, he said.

The verification forms included form Alif for registering a vote, form Bay for excluding a vote, Form 2 for enrolling an entire family and form Jeem for the correction of an address.

The district election commissioner would provide a list of enumerators block to the verification staff with the electoral list of those who had CNICs.

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