ISLAMABAD: Secretary of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Ishtiak Ahmed Khan has urged voters to get information about their vote numbers, serial numbers and polling stations before May 11 because the mobile phone service may be suspended for some areas on the polling day.

Talking to media personnel here on Sunday, Mr Khan said the ECP had sought a report about 90‚000 fake ballot papers seized in Chakdara.

However, he said he had been informed that the dummy ballot papers were being used by a political party for educating its voters about how to cast votes.

He said that printing of 150 million ballot papers had been completed and the remaining 30m papers would be ready by May 7. “The printing of ballot papers for Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) has been completed. Printing of ballot papers for Sindh is in progress.

“Except Peshawar and Mardan, ballot papers for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are ready. Printing of ballot papers for five districts of Punjab has also been completed.”

The ECP secretary said that political parities would not be allowed to give any voter data to people on the polling day.

Arrangements had been finalised to establish 69,875 polling stations across the country and most polling stations were within a distance of two kilometres from the voters’ houses, he added.

Following orders of the Supreme Court, he said, polling stations had not been shifted from places where they were established in 2008.

He said so far the ECP had received 313 complaints about polling stations which had been forwarded to the district returning officers with instructions to address them. The complaints were available on the ECP’s website.

Answering a question, Mr Khan said the issue of voting for overseas Pakistanis would be settled on Monday. He said the ECP had no resources to provide transport facility to 80m voters.

VIOLATION OF CODE: Director General of ECP Syed Sher Afgan has asked the chairman of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) in a letter to ban an advertisement being telecast by television channels as ‘paid political content-PPP’ since May 4, showing a telephonic conversation between former attorney general retired Justice Malik Qayyum and former chairman of the National Accountability Bureau Saifur Rehman.

The ECP on May 3 had instructed the Pemra to ban advertisement on television channels, showing telephonic conversation between former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif and Justice Qayyum.