LAHORE, June 10: The government decision to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18 years for the upcoming general elections has cost over Rs100 million to the Punjab Election Commission.
President Gen Pervez Musharraf had promulgated the Conduct of General Elections (Amendment) Order, 2002, on May 15, inserting Article 7-A prescribing “For the election of members of national and provincial assemblies any citizen who has attained the age of 18 years on the first day of January, 2002, shall be eligible to vote and chief election commissioner shall cause the electoral rolls to be prepared accordingly under provisions of the Electoral Rolls Act 1974.”
Such an amendment was introduced when the provincial election commission had submitted manuscripts of electoral rolls prepared under Section 7 of the Electoral Rolls Act, 1974, requiring valid voting age of 21 years to Nadra. The provincial election commission hired a total workforce of 46,793 —- 44 registration officers, 996 assistant registration officers, 11,500 supervisors and 34,253 enumerators —- all across the Punjab. This house-to-house enumeration campaign starting from Jan 1 and ending on Feb 11, 2002, was aimed at updating the electoral rolls prepared for local bodies polls held in July last with a minimum voting age of 18 years.
The campaign was run in 34 Punjab districts —- Rawalpindi, Attock, Jhelum, Chakwal, Sargodha, Khushab, Mianwali, Bhakkar, Faislabad, Jhang, Toba Tek Singh, Gujranwala, Hafizabad, Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin, Sialkot, Narowal, Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Okara, Multan, Lodhran, Khanewal, Sahiwal, Pakpattan, Vehari, D.G. Khan, Rajanpur, Muzafargarh, Layyah, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Rahim Yar Khan and the federal capital Islamabad.
The provincial election commission paid each assistant registration officer, supervisor and enumerator Rs5,000, Rs3,000 and Rs2,000, respectively, for the enumeration campaign bringing the field force budget to Rs100.80 million exclusive of payments to registration officers which are yet to be decided. After having spent such a huge amount on the field force alone employed for the enumeration campaign, the three-year reduction in the voting age was a shock for certain provincial election commission officials who say the campaign was nothing but an “exercise in futility”.
An addition of 42,68,096 voters attaining 21 years of age on Jan 1, 2002, was made to the previously prepared electoral rolls while 170,2,656 voters were deleted all across the Punjab. Following this amendment all such deletions would have to be added back to rolls by the provincial election commission. Moreover, 518 civil judges appointed as revising authorities to decide 67,624 claims filed by different voters throughout the Punjab were in a fix with regard to disposal of such claims which had been filed under the previous section of the Electoral Rolls Act, 1974.
When approached for comments, Provincial Election Commissioner Rahim Nawaz Khan Durrani rejected the notion that the campaign had gone in vain. “Though the election commission did spend a huge amount on the enumeration campaign, we have got useful results out of it which would help prepare rolls under the amended act.”