LAHORE: The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) Normalisation Committee has completed the physical scrutiny of clubs in 77 districts out of a total 169 and has cleared 1150 clubs to have voting rights, its chairman Haroon Malik said on Friday.

Haroon claimed it was a major step forward towards the PFF’s long-awaited elections.

“Overall, around 6000 clubs from across the country applied for registration and 3800 were cleared for the physical scrutiny,” Haroon said during a press conference here at the Football House on Friday.

“So far 2300 appeared for scrutiny and among them 1150 clubs have been cleared to have the right to vote.

“The process of scrutiny is in progress in Balo­chistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir. The committee had to postpone the process twice in these two units due to different reasons but we are hoping that physical scrutiny in all the districts of the country will be completed by the mid of March, including in AJK and Balochistan.”

The Normalisation Committee has until March 15 to deliver the elections as per the deadline given by FIFA. However, it is likely that the world football governing body will extend the cutoff date for the Haroon-led NC to complete the polls.

“We are trying our best to complete the process well on time but it is a big task,” said the NC chairman. “Both FIFA and AFC (Asian Football Confederation) are well aware about the current position and both the organisations have direct access to the online data of the clubs.”

Haroon said the clubs that could not clear the physical scrutiny will have the right to appeal. But even then they will have the only playing rights and not the voting rights.

The same clubs would also have the right to apply for the voting right in next year’s scrutiny process, as it will be an annual exercise to open the registration for new clubs.

The NC chief said the district level elections of 77 cleared districts would be completed by the end of this month while the physical scrutiny of the other districts will end by the mid of March.

After completing the elections at the district level, the NC will conduct polls at the provincial level. Dawn understands that the NC aims to complete the second phase by April 15 and then wait for 60 days as per PFF’s constitution to hold the elections for the body itself.

The NC expects yet another extension till July 15 to complete the entire exercise.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2024