ISLAMABAD, May 8: The Nadra chairman Tariq Malik on Wednesday said the people holding expired computerised national identity card (CNIC) or NICOP would be eligible for casting their votes.

Presiding over a meeting the Nadra Chairman issued directives to NADRA offices against confiscating the expired CNICs of the applicants at the time of renewal, modification or new card processing.

“As per the section 6, sub- section 2 Clause B- which states eligibility criteria for a voter to be registered or for casting of vote, the citizenscan cast their votes at existing cards in case, their new card doesn’t arrive before election day,” he said.

He also issued directives regarding special arrangements to be made in order to expedite under process Smart Card, CNIC modification and lost cases regardless of the fact the applicants have applied under normal or urgent category.

Chairman NADRA issued special instructions to prioritise the printing and dispatch of cards on war footing.

The meeting also discussed the SMS service developed by Nadra for ECP enabling all the 86.1 million voters to locate and obtain the names of their polling stations along with their own names in the voters list.

According to Nadra more than 32 million people have so far verified their polling station and vote registration details through mobile SMS Service 8300 across the country.

In last three days, 6.5 Million voters have checked their polling station information through 8300 service.

The highest numbers (2.2 million) of SMS have been received on May 7, 2013 which included 477,000 from Sindh, 300,000 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 109,000 SMS from Baluchistan, 1.20 million from Punjab, 85,000 from Fata and 52,000 from Islamabad.

Through the 8300 SMS service voters can verify information about their vote numbers, serial numbers and polling stations.

“We would urge the voters to use 8300 service before polling day to avoid any inconvenience due to disruption in communication services in some parts of country in regards to law and order situation,” chairman Nadra said.

He lauded the technical departments in Nadra for enabling the ECP to launch the countrywide biggest SMS service.

“This is to empower voters with information to help them cast their votes in easy, speedy and hassle-free way” said Mr Tariq Malik.