THIS is with reference to A.U. Siddiqui’s letter ‘Self-help with voters’ list’ (Sept, 26), narrating the woes of the voters for getting their names enrolled in the voters’ list. The writer has raised various questions regarding the reliability of electoral rolls and the competency of the Election Commission of Pakistan in facilitating voters.

As far as the reliability of the voting list is concerned, having link with database management system of Nadra, the ECP for the first time has prepared credible rolls, bringing an end to the duplicate registration of votes, CNIC being the unique identifying feature.

However, it cannot be ruled out that rolls contain errors as some of the voters have been registered at other than their permanent addresses.

In preparing the protracted phases of preparation of voting list, right from house listing, door-to-door verification of voters and displaying provisional lists at display centres across the country, as well as lengthy comparison exercise of draft electoral rolls with provisional electoral rolls, the ECP staff did its best through hectic efforts round the clock to do away with all such errors and irregularities.

Yet in the final publication of rolls by Nadra a number of errors and irregularities have been retained, which ought to have been corrected by Nadra.

Although, in accordance with the law, the rolls are final in itself, yet in order to remove anomalies the ECP has taken some more initiatives to make the voting list more perfect.

For the first time, even after the publication of the final electoral rolls, the voting list has been made available at the lowest administrative ebb at Union Council levels in rural areas and municipal and town committees in towns and cities in the offices of the district administration and educational department.

All the relevant forms of addition/transfer of vote from one electoral area to another, deletion and correction have also been made available along with the voting list, and the staff has been bound to facilitate voters in filling the relevant forms and transferring them to the relevant district office of the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Hence, voters need not leave their houses to visit the secretariat or the district office of the ECP.

This process will continue till the announcement of the election schedule.

IMTIAZ ALI Larkana