SC disposes of bogus voters’ case

ISLAMABAD – The Supreme Court on Thursday disposed of a petition regarding deletion of 37.8 million bogus votes in the electoral rolls.
A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and consisting of Justice Mohammad Sair Ali and Justice Ghulam Rabbani heard the case of 37.8 million bogus names included in the electoral rolls of various constituencies. During the hearing, Election Commission of Pakistan Secretary Ishtiak Ahmed Khan informed the court that the commission had chalked out a plan to delete all fictitious names that were not in the database of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).
He said under the direction of the chief election commissioner, the ECP had been making efforts for the past one year in collaboration with NADRA to prepare fresh and accurate computerised electoral rolls on the basis of NADRA’s database. He said CNIC was not mandatory for registration as voter earlier. Khan said authorities had completed the first phase and NADRA had provided verified and augmented data pertaining to 2007 electoral rolls that contained variances in terms of errors, multiple and bogus entries. NADRA’s had pointed out that of total 81.2 million voters registered in 2007, only 44.02 had been verified by NADRA.
He added that the second phase would start in June and a door-to-door campaign would be launched for the registration of voters and the verified list would be published in the third phase. Afnan Kundi, lawyer for NADRA, told the court that it was the responsibility of the authority to issue CNIC to every Pakistani citizen who was 18 years old. He said NADRA had registered 90 percent Pakistanis and issued 81.59 million CNICs across the country, including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Ali Zafar, lawyer for petitioner Mubashir Luqman, argued that there should be harmony between the figures of NADRA and ECP.