Nadra completes 80m draft electoral rolls
Shakeel Anjum
ISLAMABAD: The enormous task of printing the draft electoral rolls of more than 80 million eligible voters under the close supervision of the Election Commission of Pakistan has been completed, deputy chairman Nadra, Tariq Malik, told journalists here Thursday.
“We have printed draft electoral rolls of all districts and transported them to district elections offices. They have been verified and received by the district election staff, he said.
Legislation approved by Parliament has made computerised national identity cards (CNIC) issued by Nadra mandatory for the registration and casting of votes. Hence the civil registry was used to prepare the draft electoral rolls.
“Nadra has registered 93% of the adult population of Pakistan by issuing 86 million CNICs and has an ambitious plan to register the rest in the next six months, said Tariq Malik.
Normally, the Election Commission conducts a door-to-door enumeration and registration exercise by hiring more than 200,000 teachers. The information collected manually is usually marred with errors. Thus, this time around, with the help of Nadra, the ECP will verify eligible voters information already printed on forms, thus reducing the error margin significantly. The ECP is going to start its door-to-door verification exercise from August 22, 2011.
“Printing of draft electoral rolls of 130 districts was possible only after the extensive analysis of Final Electoral Rolls of 2008 (FER-2008) through the close collaboration of ECP and Nadra and after the application of 139,861 census block codes as an aftermath of the door-to-door housing census conducted by the Pakistan Census Organisation,” said Malik.
The analysis revealed that there were approximately 37 million unverified existed (44 million verified voters with CNICs out of 81 million voters registered in FER-2008). However 36 million new voters with valid CNICs were added to the draft electoral rolls. “This augmentation done under the business rules approved by the ECP consists of eligible voters who got ID cards since the inception of Nadra till the preparation of draft ERs in 2011, thus enabling them to exercise the right to vote, said Malik. The draft electoral rolls now consist of 80.6 million eligible voters with valid CNICs.
Malik urged all citizens to register to vote and verify if they are already registered by helping the ECP staff knocking at their doors from August 22, 2011. “This is truly an equal opportunity for all citizens including women, eunuchs, minorities, poor, rich, young and senior citizens,” he said.
Malik said Nadra’s 800 data acquisition units, including 220 mobile registration vans and offices countrywide, had been directed to work with the district election staff to help citizens without CNICs get them during the verification exercise. “Nadra intends to utilise this opportunity to reach out to the unregistered population and explain to them that not having a CNIC will disenfranchise them. So, this is the time to act and get a CNIC to vote, he said. Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani made getting a CNIC free of cost in June 2008.
Source: The News
Date:8/19/2011
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