ISLAMABAD: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja on Saturday vowed to bring down gender gap among voters by bolstering a campaign to enroll maximum women as voters.

“The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is committed to improving electoral participation of vulnerable communities including women, persons with disabilities, transgender persons and non-Muslim minorities, through extraordinary measures to register and educate them as required by the Elections Act, 2017,” he said while speaking at the orientation workshop for senior management of the ECP and the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) on phase-IV of the campaign, which started in July 2021.

The campaign, which was launched in October 2017, has been able to register 10.2 million women as voters during its earlier three phases, bringing down the burgeoning gender gap to 12.37m in April 2021.

The campaign works closely with Nadra and civil society organisations and is currently being run in 84 districts.

The CEC told the participants that women played a critical role in all aspects of social and economic life in Pakistan. The election commission would make efforts to also enable them to participate in electoral processes in the spirit of Article 25 of the Constitution, which guaranteed equality for all citizens, he added.

The CEC acknowledged the assistance provided by Nadra in the making the campaign a success by issuing national identity cards to women.

The orientation workshop was also attended by ECP members from Sindh and Balochistan, Nadra Chairman Tariq Malik, ECP Secretary Omer Hamid Khan, Special Secretary Zafar Iqbal Hussain, Additional Secretary Manzoor Ahmed Malik, the provincial election commissioners, directors general of Nadra’s eight regions around the country and senior officials from both organisations. Representatives of the civil society organisations and development partners also attended the workshop.

The data of voters obtained by Dawn in July 2020 showed total number of voters at 112.39m, including 62.55m (55.66pc) male and 51.66m (44.34 pc) female voters, translating into a variation as high as 11.32 per cent.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2021