KARACHI, Oct 9: The voters list of the National Assembly constituency 250 has been found to be too defective so much so that the names of a top judicial officer of the province and his family were included only three days ago.

“Names of many voters in Defence and Clifton who cast their votes in 1997, 1993, 1990 and 1988 have not been included in the current voters list,” a candidate from NA-250 informed Dawn on Wednesday.

“Then there are many voters whose names appear in the list more than twice, and there is even the names of dead persons in the voters list,” he disclosed.

He said objections could not be filed on this list because it was delivered only three days before the nomination papers had to be filed. In fact, the entire election process is pregnant with uncertainty and confusion leaving both candidates and voters bewildered.

There are 239,000 registered voters in NA-250 who include many non-Muslims. Non-Muslims are not identified separately. In 1997 this was NA-191, and then the number of registered voters in the constituency was about 258,000. This constituency has now been restructured and about 30,000 voters from this area have been included in the other adjoining constituency.

The number of voters has increased because of the population increase in the area (construction of new houses), minorities and inclusion of youngsters up to 18 years of age.