ISLAMABAD, Oct 28: Chief Election Commissioner Irshad Hasan Khan on Sunday proposed that the next year's local government elections should be held on the basis of joint electorate system in order to ensure national unity.

Speaking at a ceremony held in connection with the third refresher course for assistant election commissioners, he said the 2002 general elections were held on the basis of joint electorate system while the local government elections 2000-2001 were held on the basis of separate electorate system.

However, he proposed that in the national interest local government elections 2005 should be held under the joint electorate system. He, however, made it clear that whether the elections were to be held on the basis of the joint or separate electorate system, names of Muslims and non-Muslims would be published separately in the voter lists.

The chief election commissioner said he was not satisfied with the ratio of induction of new voters during the upgradation of the voter lists for the forthcoming local bodies elections.

He said people were not interested in registering their names as they did not know the value of their votes. Only 272,000 new voters were registered till October 15, which was extremely low as compared to the over 140 million population of the country.

That's why, he said, the deadline for the registration of new voters had been extended to December 31. Further extension in the deadline was impossible as local bodies elections would be held in 2005. For the convenience of the people, he said, the government had also allowed voters to cast their votes on their old national identity cards if they did not possess the computerised ones.

Mr Khan said he was in favour of the introduction of the compulsory voting system in Pakistan to make the local bodies elections more participatory and bring changes at the gross-roots level.

The system was already implemented in Australia, according to which all those eligible should be included in the voter lists by the government.

He said he was committed to the capacity building of the assistant election commissioners and other staff and various refresher courses were being organized for this purpose.

The election commission, he said, had mostly been computerized despite the fact that it was a non-IT organization. Computers have been provided to all the district offices. A group from the commission's staff has been prepared as master trainers who will train their colleagues in the provinces.