KARACHI, Sept 9: About five million forms for enlistment of eligible voters have been distributed and over 2.5 million have so far been submitted dully filled by people in Sindh.

The submission at a lower side is due to the absence of family heads at their respective residences, mostly in posh areas, despite subsequent visits by the election commission staff concerned to collect the filled up forms.

This was stated by Sindh Election Commissioner Qamaruzzaman Khan while talking to Dawn here on Saturday.

He put the number of the households to be visited for the purpose at about 6.1 million, and stated that the distribution of forms had been started on July 29 after completion of a door-to-door enumeration of households. The collection of the forms by enumerators, assistant returning officers, would be completed by October 6, he added.

Responding to a question, he described the pace of work as ‘satisfactory’, and maintained that whatever delay occurred in the process was caused by the bad weather in general, and the law and order problem at certain places. However, he added, the process of collecting the form would be completed by the deadline which had now been extended to Sept 30 from the Sept 11, set earlier.

When his attention was drawn to the reservations expressed by the major opposition parties, including the PPP and JI, over the accuracy of the new voters’ list, he pointed out that the election commission had been taking due care and would address all such complaints through a rechecking by its supervisory staff. This would be followed by counter check to be done by Nadra through its database, he added.

In reply to a question, he said that the old voters’ list prepared in 2000 and 2002 for the holding of local and general elections respectively, had discrepancies that drew a lot of complaints. These anomalies, he said, were due to the use of old and new NICs in preparation of the list. However, in the preparation of the new list, all precautions were being taken.

Mr Qamaruzzaman pointed out that the EC had set up complaint centres where a complete record of the complaints lodged with it and their disposal was being maintained. Encouraging complainants, he maintained that they were, in fact, helping the EC in ensuring enlistment of each and every eligible voter.

He said that the new list would be in the form of ‘computerised electoral rolls’ which would replace both the previous lists and would need only updating for use in the next local government election.

The provincial EC chief said that before publishing the finalised rolls, a draft voters’ list would be published, hopefully by January next year.

When asked about fresh entries, he said that the previous lists had been showing 16 million eligible voters but considering the deletion of double entries, it was not likely that the new rolls would have more than 10 per cent increase of fresh entries. The door-to-door checking system and computerising of data greatly helped prepare an accurate list, he said.

He appealed to people to cooperate with the election staff by submitting the forms duly filled by them promptly. In case the staff could not visit a house to collect the forms due to any reason, one may submit the same to the concerned assistant election commissioner, he said.