SAHIWAL: ​The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has displayed preliminary electoral rolls of 2018 at 45 centres across the district. Of them, 27 are in Sahiwal tehsil and 28 in Chichawatni tehsil.

People can check their electoral status at their nearest display centre. In case they have any objection to the list, they may file form No 15 to 17 with the ECP for regsieterion/cancellation or renewal of their vote/s.

Lists will be on display till April 24.

The exercise means a lot for the district voters as the delimitation 2018 has cut down one National Assembly (NA) constituency from the district. Earlier, Shaiwal had four NA constituencies - 160 to 163 - and seven Provincial Assembly (PA) constituencies.

Now, it has three NA constituencies – 147 to 149 – and seven PA constituencies – PP 196 to 202.

District Election Commissioner Rana Abdul Ghaffar told Dawn the ECP had provided voters list, details of qanoogo circle, patwar circle, electoral area, census block codes and advertisement material to each display centre.

Every display centre in charge has copies of forms No 15, 16 and 17. These ​in charge​s are mostly from educational institutions.

Mr Ghaffar said each in charge has been told to announce about the centre through public address systems of local mosques.

Divisional Election Commissioner Syed Hammad Ali Gilani said no non-government organisation was monitoring any display centre. He said provincial and district ECP offices were monitoring the centres.

Several in charges said that on the first day of the lists display, many people had visited them.

A visitor to a display centre at the Government MC Middle School, Block 11, Chichawatni, told Dawn the publicity campaign about the centre was very poor.

PML-N worker Imtiaz said though national newspapers and electronic media were running a campaign about the centres, an organised publicity campaign was needed at local levels. He said likely candidates and political parties should mobilise voters to check their electoral status in their nearest centres.

This correspondent visited several display centres and found the banners about centres hoist at inappropriate places. According to the ECP data, there are 1.45 million voters, of them 814,678 are males and 638,054 females.

Of the non-Muslim voters, there are 408 and 371 male and female Ahmedi voter​s​ in the district Sahiwal.​ ​The data is silent on transgender population.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2018