KARACHI: After over two decades, more than 142,000 voters — 75,000 men and 67,000 women — will go to the polls in the Cantonment Board Clifton on April 25 to elect 10 councillors, each representing a ward.

The 10 directly elected councillors will then elect two more councillors to represent minorities and women, making a total of 12 elected councillors on the board.

An equal number of councillors will be nominated by the board president, who is in this case Station Commander Karachi Brigadier Farrukh Waseem, while CBC chief executive officer Shahrome Safdar Khattak will act as secretary to the board.

The CBC has a mixed population, katchi abadis that fall within the board’s jurisdiction as well as one of the elite residential areas, the Defence Housing Authority, who will elect their representatives to protect their rights on the board.

Sources said the size of population in different wards was inexplicably unequal with population in one ward being more than seven times larger than it was in another ward.

Thus, one ward with fewer number of voters would be sending one councillor to the board and the other ward with seven times larger number of voters would also be voting for just one councillor.

The bizarrely unequal number of voters was not in conformity with ‘one person one vote’ principle which formed the basis of elections in democracies, said the sources.

A look at voters’ data of different wards reveals that there are 5,677 voters — 3,327 men and 2,350 women — but in Ward 9 the number of voters is 41,442 — 21,050 men and 20,392 women. Similarly, in Ward 1 the population is 5,743 whereas in Ward 10 the population is 25,146.

A candidate in Ward 9 said he and other contestants had to approach an over seven times larger number of voters than candidates contesting from wards with smaller populations such as wards 1 and 2.

He said that unequal distribution of voters in different wards was a violation of the principle of adult franchise which was one of the requirements laid down under the latest ordinance issued by President Mamnoon Hussain on March 5, 2015.

It says: “The population of wards within a cantonment shall be as far as possible uniform.”

He said the results would be totally undemocratic as each ward should have around 14,000 votes, plus minus 2-3 per cent. Though the objection to this effect had been filed with the election commission many days back, no action had been taken, he added.

Many polling stations declared sensitive

The polling stations declared sensitive in different wards are: Ward 2: Govt Boys Primary School Cantonment No 1, Kalapul; KMC Primary School No 62 and 63, Hazara Colony, Kalapul.

Ward 3: Railway Secondary School, Railway Colony, Cantt; Govt Boys Secondary School Evershine, Pak Jamhuria Colony.

Ward 4: Naval Secondary School, Naval Colony, near PNS Shifa.

Ward 5: Govt Boys Secondary School Qamar-ul-Islam, Punjab Colony.

Ward 6: Ismail Allahwala Secondary School, Delhi Colony; Amina Girls School in Delhi Colony, Street 7.

Ward 7: Govt Girls Secondary School in P & T Colony.

Ward 8: Instituted of Chartered Accountants Pakistan near Teen Talwar; Bay View Junior School, Block 9, near International Islamic Centre; Neelam High School at Neelam Colony, Zamzama Street 3, Phase V, DHA.

Ward 10: Afreen Public School, 10th Gizri Street, Lower Gizri.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2015

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