KARACHI: Mr Justice Abdus Sattar, Chief Election Commissioner, denied yesterday [Sept 12] that the voters lists concerning Karachi district had been tampered with.

Talking to newsmen in the office of the Provincial Election Commissioner, Sind, Mr Mahmood, he said that he held detailed inquiries into the allegations made about the tampering of the electoral lists and had come to the conclusion that no such thing had happened. …

“It is known that these rolls were prepared at a time when we did not have any idea as to the actual shape of the National and Provincial constituencies,” he added. “The rolls were prepared in cities including Karachi, taking the municipal wards as the electoral areas. When we took up the work of delimitation of constituencies we found that it was not possible to keep the ward intact for the purpose of carving out the National and Provincial constituencies.”

“[On] the question as to how to decide those wards, we had before us the boundaries of the Local Councils which were recognised as administrative units and, therefore, constituencies were carved out with reference to Local Councils,” he said.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2020