ISLAMABAD, Dec 20: The Election Commission handed over on Thursday electronic copies of computerised electoral rolls to three major political parties.

Representatives of Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Q and PML-N each received a set of 272 CDs.

EC Secretary Kanwar Dilshad told Dawn that other parties might also get these CDs, and candidates could buy CDs of any constituency for Rs200.

He said the computerised electoral rolls would be available on the EC website (www.ecp.gov.pk) within a week.

Answering a question, he said the electoral rolls were error-free now after 3.7 million duplicate entries had been deleted during their computerisation.

He said printing of ballot papers was in progress and would be completed in the first week of January. The returning officers would hand over ballot papers and other accessories to the polling staff one day before the election, he added.

He said a foolproof mechanism was being applied for the printing process of ballot papers with the use of special paper and security features.

Answering a question, Mr Dilshad said that extra security personnel would be deployed at sensitive polling stations.

The EC secretary, who visited Quetta on Tuesday, said the provincial home secretary had briefed him on the law and order situation in Balochistan. He said about 1,160 polling stations had been declared most sensitive in the province, but it did not mean that there would be no polling in these areas. It only meant deployment of extra security personnel.

He said it was a routine and traditional exercise of law-enforcement agencies to do home work for elections aimed at ensuring smooth and peaceful polling.

He said other provinces would submit their reports in this regard by December 24-25.

Responding to another question, he said about 2,000 foreign observers would arrive soon to monitor the elections.

About the training of electoral staff, Mr Dilshad said the second phase of the process would be completed by the end of this month; 550,000 election workers would be trained in this phase.

Senator Lateef Khosa, head of the PPP election monitoring cell; Ghulam Mustafa Malik, Media Co-ordinator of the PML, and Ms Nuzhat Sadiq, President of PML-N women’s wing (Islamabad), received the CDs of electoral rolls.

Agencies add: Mr Dilshad said that sets of electoral roll CDs of provinces and districts had also been dispatched from the EC Secretariat to the provincial election commissioners and assistant election commissioners in the districts for supply to the contesting candidates. The step would enhance the transparency of the electoral process, he added.

Talking to a private TV channel, the EC secretary said CDs comprised the names of 81 million voters for 272 constituencies of the National Assembly.

However, a final list of voters would be provided after Eid holidays, he said.