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ISLAMABAD, Aug 11: The Election Commission has started making arrangements for setting up 70,000 polling stations across the country for the upcoming general elections.
Chief Election Commissioner, Irshad Hasan Khan, has already issued special instructions that all the polling station will be set up in government buildings to ensure impartiality in the polling.
The CEC also ordered that where no government buildings were available, improvised polling stations will be set up on public property.
He has also issued special instructions that it should be ensured that no polling stations are set up on premises which belong to or are under the control of the contesting candidates.
TRAINING: The EC has prepared a comprehensive programme to impart training to polling staff to handle general elections in an effective manner.
In all, 280,000 polling personnel will be trained by the experts of the Election Commission of Pakistan.
An EC spokesman told APP on Sunday that the training of polling personnel “is the most important step” to ensure free, fair and transparent general elections in the country.
Training in various aspects of electoral management to all the presiding officers and assistant presiding officers is being organized by the EC through its experts who have experience of holding previous elections.
The spokesman explained that the training will ensure that there will be at least one trained person per polling booth within a polling station who would be able to assist the other staff.
A “what’s new” section has been included in the training manuals to allow experienced polling personnel to see what has changed since the previous elections. The entire training process will be converted into a documentary.
The training programme will also highlight such topics as counting and sorting procedures, assessing the validity of ballots, determining voter preference marks (where used), treatment of challenges, problems that could arise during the count, closing of the count and calculation of results and packing of materials at close of count.
Meanwhile, more than 1,700 district returning officers, returning officers and assistant returning officers will supervise the elections.
The EC has already approved the appointment of these officers who will be responsible for fair, free and impartial elections.
In all, 109 district returning officers, 678 returning officers and 945 assistant returning officers have been approved to be appointed for the conduct of polls.
ELIGIBLE VOTERS: With the reduction of minimum age limit from 21 to 18 years for voters, the number of eligible voters has increased to 72 million who will use their right of franchise in the coming October.
The change in the age limit has allowed more than 5.2 million youths to register themselves as voters.
According to fresh voter lists displayed by the EC for the information of general public, there are 72,017,234 voters in the country, including 5.2 million who are between the age of 18 and 21 years.
There are 3,86,364 registered voters in Islamabad, 4,13,63,098 in Punjab, 1,61,64,072 in Sindh, 88,82,474 in the NWFP, 12,87,805 in Fata and 39,33,421 in Balochistan, according to the fresh voter list.
POLLS ON SCHEDULE: Meanwhile, Federal Information Minister Nisar A. Memon, has made it clear that the general elections in the country will be held in October this year according to schedule.
He was talking to senior journalists at his residence in Karachi on Sunday.
The minister said some people were trying to create doubts in this respect. They are those who have either not prepared themselves to contest the polls or are not confident about their success and want to gain time to strengthen their position, he added.
Such an impression is also being created by those whose party has not got registered or have left the party or have not decided as to who will contest the elections from where, he said.
He said the sitting government is not participating in these polls nor is it a party to this process.
He clarified that no one is the favourite of the president in these polls.—APP
