PESHAWAR: The Election Commission of Pakistan on Thursday claimed to have completed preparations for the local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Provincial election commissioner Sharifullah told a meeting of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Gender and Disability Electoral Working Group here that the ECP had completed initial delimitation of the village and neighbourhood councils and would display the preliminary delimitation report for the people until Sept 18.

He said the ECP had asked people to file complaints and proposals about delimitation reports with the delimitation authority until Oct 2.

“The ECP will decide delimitation objections and proposals on Oct 17, while the voter lists for local body elections and by-elections will be notified on Oct 4,” he said.

Mr Sharifullah said the delimitation process was pending in divisional headquarters, including Peshawar, Swat, Mardan, Abbottabad, BAnnu and Dera Ismail Khan, due to some legal and administrative reasons.

He said the ECP had updated the 8300 service in addition to the issuance of a helpline and complaint management system for the registration of the people’s complaints.

The provincial election commissioner declared the holding of the 2018 general elections a challenge and said the ECP met it successfully with the cooperation of stakeholders.

He said it was very difficult to ensure the polling of 10 per cent votes of women but it happened successfully except one provincial assembly seat in Shangla district, where re-election was held afterward.

Mr Sharifullah urged media and civil society to help the ECP create public awareness of vote registration and polling of women’s votes.

Earlier, ECP additional director general Nighat Siddique highlighted a pilot project, Women NIC and Voter Registration Campaign, and said the ECP had achieved 80 percent targets in that respect. She appreciated the active role of the working group.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2020