KARACHI, March 25: Provincial Election Commissioner Qamar-uz-Zaman said on Sunday that new electoral lists would be kept at 70,000 display centres across the country, so that the masses could check their names and other details from them.

He said this while addressing a workshop on ‘Investigative Reporting for General Elections,’ jointly organized by the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) and The Asia Foundation, at a local hotel.

He said that it was the need of the hour that people should verify their names and other details in the electoral lists and added that the election system of the country was fair and transparent, as compared to many other countries. According to him the main problem was political parties and candidates who did not accept defeat in the elections and rather levelled allegations of rigging.

Qamar-uz-Zaman said that the Election Commission always took action against rigging if the presiding officer or returning officer of any polling station complained in this regard.

He said that the Election Commission would make efforts to provide transparent ballot boxes at polling stations in the next general elections, so that reservations in this connection could be addressed.

Welcoming the monitoring of elections by the media, the provincial election commissioner said that the media played a positive role in elections, saying that it would help ensure polls were more transparent and fair.

To a question, he said that allegations of rigging in NA-250 by-election by the Pakistan Peoples Party were wrong because it had never obtained more than 12,000 votes from this constituency.

To another question, Qamar-uz-Zaman said that the list of polling stations’ staff should be prepared 15 days before election day. He said that the lists of election staff would not be provided to candidates as they used to exert pressure on them.—PPI