LAHORE, Jan 27: Chief Election Commissioner Irshad Ahmad Khan has told registration officers of the Election Commission that he will take any complaint against them as a complaint against himself and “will react to it.”

The CEC, who took oath of his office a week ago, is visiting the provincial offices of the Election Commission to understand and see by himself the working of the body.

On Sunday, he visited the Lahore offices of the commission where he held a meeting with the officers and directed them to “work hard and take the job like a Jihad.”

Talking to Dawn after the meeting, Mr Khan said right now he had nothing to say (on the affairs of the commission) as he was trying to understand the business by meeting its officials.

“Right now work on the first phase of the election process (preparation of electoral lists) is in process and I am stressing upon the officials to prepare error-free voters’ lists.”

According to him, the CEC was directly contacting the subordinate staff for the first time. “I will visit Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta as well.”

Khan said being the former chief justice of Pakistan, people were pinning high hopes on him as the chief election commissioner. “My first and last preference is to hold free and fair polls.”

He appealed to the nation to pray for him as well as for his staff in accomplishing the sensitive task.

Meanwhile, during his meeting with the Punjab EC officers, the CEC directed the ROs not to accept any influence for bogus or double entries in the voters’ lists.

He also directed the officials concerned to entertain the complaints received by the (voter lists) Revising Authority during the last polls.

Sources said the EC staff had been given seven days — from Feb 1 to 7 — at the end of the door-to-door campaign for the verification of voters on Jan 30, to prepare hand-written voters’ lists.

From Feb 8 these lists would be displayed at three different public places for 15 days to seek objections from the people.

The EC staff is mainly banking upon the lists already prepared by the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) for the last local body polls.