KARACHI, Jan 2: The Election Commission of Pakistan’s drive of house-to- house enumeration and preparation of electoral rolls to send it to the press for printing for the scheduled October 2002 polls is in full swing in Karachi, like elsewhere in the country.

During the campaign, which started with the beginning of the New Year on Tuesday and would continue till Jan 30, the enumeration staff would verify the lists of voters registered at every house and delete or add the names from the lists on a case-to-case basis after compliance with the formalities.

The enumeration staff, most of whom are drawn from the education department, have been provided the necessary training.

The process of preparation of draft electoral rolls, which began on Oct 30, has already been completed on Dec 26. The draft rolls, in which persons of the age of 21 years on January 1, 2002 had been enrolled as voters, would be released on Feb 11 for inviting objections which would be finalized from April 9 to May 29. The final electoral rolls would be published on Aug 8 and would be delivered to the Election Commission by NADRA.

According to the schedule of elections announced on Aug 14 last year, the constitution of election commission has already been late by three months. The government has not only failed to nominate the two members of the EC, but with the completion of the tenure of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Justice Abdul Qadeer Chaudhry, the office of CEC has also fallen vacant. However, all other staff of the commission have been fully geared up to follow the schedule within its means.

Sources at the EC said the work of delimitation of constituencies could be taken up after the constitution of the new EC, and also any decision about increasing the number of seats in the National and provincial assemblies after this. The delimitation work, they added, still could be completed within the scheduled time as the date for completing the delimitation process was June 30.

Besides decision on delimitation, proposed constitutional amendments to introduce checks and balances will be announced by May for comments and will be finalized by June 30, as announced by President Pervez Musharraf in his address to the nation on Aug 14 last year in which the details of the roadmap for revival of the democratic dispensation in the country had been made public.

On July 10 or 11, the dates for elections to the National and provincial assemblies and the Senate will be announced. The Election Commission will announce the election schedule on Aug 1, and the exercise of filing of nomination papers and their scrutiny, list of candidates, allocation of symbols, printing of ballot papers, nomination of returning officers and designation of polling stations will be completed by Aug 7.

The elections will be completed between Oct 1 and 11.

A proposal is, reportedly, under consideration to hold elections to the National and the four provincial assemblies the same day, to be followed by Senate elections, so that transfer of power could be completed by Nov 30.

The general elections will be held on a party basis.

The elections are 10 months away, but, except for demands by certain leaders for fair and free polls, no political party has initiated any exercise to warm up its cadres.

The leaders are awaiting announcement of a constitutional package, which, they say, would be beyond the mandate given to the government by the Supreme Court. In this connection, they referred to the loud thinking in certain government circles about holding the elections on the basis of proportional representation which, if carried out, would be a new experiment.