KARACHI: Registered voters in six districts of Karachi have increased from 7.2 million to 7.5 million.

This was stated by Regional Election Commissioner Ali Asghar Sial and District Election Commissioner Tabinda Akhlaq while addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday.

They said district Central had the highest number of voters while district Malir, which has the largest area, had the lowest number of voters.

“We have requested Nadra to improve their system of issuance of Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) because without it, voters cannot get themselves enrolled in the voters’ list,” the officials said.

According to the details, there are 7.57 million voters in the city, of which 4.3m are male and 3.2m are female.

In district South, there are one million voters, of which 565,079 are male and 443,144 are female.

District West has 1.5m voters, out of which 931,942 are male and 601,284 are female.

In district Central, the total number of registered voters is 1.7 million. Male voters are 991,013 while female voters are 785,086 in number.

District East has 1.3 million voters. The total number of male voters is 747,611 while the total number of female voters is 612,298.

In district Malir, registered voters are 689,759, including 405,843 male and 283,916 female.

District Korangi has 1.2 million voters, of which 687,584 are male and 519,097 are female.

In reply to a question, the election commission officials said preparations for next year’s general elections had begun with education programmes for voters in every district.

“We are trying to improve voters’ turnout by involving all stakeholders in the process,” they said.

In reply to another question, they said transgender persons were not getting themselves registered in the voters’ list as they did not possess CNICs which, according to them, were not being issued to them by Nadra.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2017