RAWALPINDI: To finalise error free electoral rolls, the Election Commission Rawalpindi on Friday launched a door-to-door campaign for periodical revision of the voter lists in view of the coming local government and the general elections.

“During the campaign, teams will verify 3,454,461 voters against the population of 5,400,898. For this purpose, the election commission has appointed 52 assistant registration officers, 585 supervisors and 1,882 verifying officials,” said District Election Commissioner Shaheen Ghazal while speaking at an awareness meeting with media, civil society members and others in the Rawalpindi Election Commission office on Friday.

Accompanied by District Election Commissioner-II Roy Sultan Bhatty, Ms Ghazal said it was expected that more than 1.7 million new voters would be registered in the district.

Registration of 1.7m new voters expected in district, says official

She said the teams would visit door to door to verify the voters and would enroll the voters according to their permanent or temporary addresses on the computerised national identity cards (CNIC). She said the teams would delete the names of those who have died and enroll new voters.

“The voters will be provided form No 13 certified by the election commission if their address was changed or a new vote enrolled. Form 14 will be given to government employees,” she said.

She said the campaign to review electoral rolls will continue from Nov 12 to Dec 7. She said the election commission had also provided a link in its website to guide people on how to register themselves.

Mr Bhatty said the election commission had requested the Punjab chief secretary to provide security to the staff. Upon this, he said, the Punjab government shared the numbers of police officers in all the areas which have been forwarded to the teams.

He said under the law, the provincial government was bound to facilitate the election commission to complete the constitutional obligation to make error-free voter lists for the next elections.

Representative of the transgender community Bubbli Malik raised the issues and problems of the community regarding enrollment of their votes. She said people did not give house on rent to the transgender persons so they were unable to stay in one area permanently.

Upon this, Ms Ghazal said the district election commission would consult its head office to solve the problems related to their registration in the electoral rolls.

A teachers’ representative informed the election commissioner that their duty timings should be fixed. In reply, Ms Ghazal said the chief secretary had directed the District Education Authority to fix the duty hours of teachers from 8am to 12 noon.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2021