KARACHI, Aug 19: The Election Commission is carrying out a survey for identification of important government buildings in every census circle to use them for the establishment of new polling stations, in additional to the previous ones, to facilitate voters in rural and urban constituencies, said Sindh Election Commissioner Sona Khan Baloch on Sunday.
Speaking to Dawn, he said that the polling stations were being increased in the light of the directive of the apex court so that maximum number of people could easily exercise their right of vote.
He said that new polling stations would facilitate voters as they could come there by foot.Besides, he said, more polling stations would curtail the time of casting a vote and improve the turnout.
Mr Baloch said that instead of carrying out a fresh exercise for the 2008 general elections the authorities had opted for the 2002 elections scheme.
He said that another reason for increasing the number of polling stations was the census blocks whose strength was increased from 21,100 to 35,313 in 2011 including in Karachi where the number of census blocs increased from 7,500 to 13,600.
The increased number of census blocks, he said, also created some confusion among voters whose vote had been transferred from their original locality to some other area due to the change in their census blocs.
Responding to another question, Mr Baloch said that the number of eligible voters had also increased in Karachi.
He said that in the 2008 general elections there were over 6.6 million voters in Karachi and now in the new electoral rolls the number of Karachi voters had risen to 6.8 million.
He said that not only the population of Karachi had increased but also many people had shifted from other parts of the country and interior of the province.
Talking about Karachi, Mr Baloch said people here on their own became conscious of the need to get their computerised national identity cards.
However, in the rural areas, the situation was different where holding a CNIC was not considered necessary.
The people in the rural areas acquired CNICs only to fulfil the condition for opening a bank account or to get their passport for going to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj and they did not feel it necessary to get their addresses updated in case of a change oflocation, he added.
Similarly, he said that after reaching the age of 18 years, many youths did not acquire their CNICs until certain factors forcedthem to do so.
He said these were some main reasons behind the apprehension that a real strength of voters of the rural areas was not shown in the new electoral rolls.
He said that in addition to government efforts to provide them CNICs and enlist them in the electoral rolls, civil society and political parties could also play their role to create awareness among the rural society that possession of the CNIC was a mustrequirement not only for casting their votes but also for all sort of documentation relating to their property and bank dealings.