With the committed deadline to complete computerised electoral rolls approaching fast, National Database and Registration Authority is toiling hard to address anomalies in the voters’ lists.
Apparently emerging due to negligence of some NADRA staffers and the enumerators appointed by the ECP, the wrong entries had surfaced in hundreds and thousands with major pertaining to registering voters in other constituencies than their own.
Sources told APP that hundreds of thousands voters from Gujranwala and Sialkot districts and other areas were mistakenly registered in the voters lists of Balochistan province constituencies. Similarly, hundreds of Islamabad residents were registered in Chakwal and those from Rawalpindi into the electoral rolls of federal capital. Moreover, instances of registering voters in other constituency were also noted during the verification process.
“This anomaly was also witnessed in other areas. When the data was compiled and presented for verification. This number was in hundreds and thousands,” the sources said. “Therefore, NADRA officials are correcting the lists.”
Earlier also, massive mistakes were unearthed by NADRA in voters lists on whose basis the 2008 general election was conducted. It was astonishing that in some areas of Sindh province and FATA even more than 50 percent voters had remained unverified by NADRA during the scrutiny of the 2008 electoral rolls.
“Now, it will not happen. Nobody will complain that his or her name is not in the lists. While nobody will also be able to get his or her name registered more than once in the new electoral rolls,” stated and Election Commission official when contacted to comment on the situation. The Supreme Court had directed the ECP to finalize authentic and error free rolls by February 23rd this year. But, the ECP requested the court to extend period for some time as the task was gigantic and had committed to complete the rolls by the end of May.
Now the Commission is confidant that electoral rolls will be completed by the end of current month. “More than 90 percent has been completed and remaining is being carried out on war footing,” the official remarked.
When asked to comment on registration objections, the official clarified that NADRA had registered most of people in the electoral rolls on basis of their permanent address mentioned in their CNICs.
However, in some cases there have been faulty entries showing registration of voters even far away from their residences. “It is simply the matter of 10 percent voters as 90 percent work has been completed and we and NADRA are working on it,” the official said.
Confident about authenticity of the new electoral rolls, the ECP official said, even after passing through this phase of addressing mistakes, SMS service will again be exploited to once again get feed back from the voters. “Even after the ongoing exercise, we shall once again ask the voters to check their entries and point out if there were any wrong entries.”
He said the updating process regarding addresses of voters and their constituencies will continue even after publication of the final electoral rolls. Giving example he said, every day around 400 employees of armed forces retire and most among them move to their ancestral abodes. Therefore, their already registered addresses in the electoral rolls, have to be changed. Similarly, thousands government employees in the federal as well as provincial department have to move to other places due to departmental transfers. Therefore, for them also, the addresses had often to be changes as per requirement and areas of posting.
“In view of these circumstances, the process to change the constituencies for casting votes has to continue,” he added.
The official confirmed that some enumerators were also found involved in negligence of duty and four among them had also faced action. He also mentioned to instances where 100 or more voter forms were signed or fixed with thumb impression by only one person.
“We are also removing such anomalies. But, there is nothing to worry. End of the day the product will be free of errors, and authentic.”