The Pakistan Army on Thursday said that soldiers would not be deployed as personal guards with the Election Commission’s staff verifying voters’ lists in Karachi, adding, that 5000 soldiers had been deployed in the city to ensure a conducive environment for the EC staff to fulfill its statutory duties.
To ensure no spurious anomalies in the verified voter lists, the EC divided Karachi into 13,622 blocks and the city has 6,926,301 registered voters in the updated electoral logs. All five districts of the metropolis were put under the charge of a their respective registration officers. Meanwhile, 43 assistant registration officers, 708 supervisors and 2,793 verification supervisors were decreed for District East. Similarly, 43 assistant registration officers, ,648 supervisors and 2,460 verification supervisors for District West, 42 assistant registration officers 615 supervisors and 1,873 verification supervisors for District South, 42 assistant registration officers, 845 supervisors and 2,769 verification supervisors for District Central and 27 assistant registration officers, 400 supervisors and 1,405 verification supervisors were decreed for District Malir. The EC appointed school teachers as supervisors, BS 17 officials as assistant registration officers and district election commissioners are registration officers.
Sindh election commission initiated the verifying process on Thursday in all five; east, west, south, central and Malir districts of the metropolis and the EC staff has faced no security quagmire yet. Per latest updates, the Sindh EC is numbering houses in the provincial capital and Sindh election commissioner Mehboob Anwar said “today our teams moved in all the districts and started numbering the houses, which would allow us to pursue the rest of the process. The verification staff writes down the family number of his allocated enumerating blocks and fills in the form by writing the name and CNIC number of the head of the family for each house. The first day was sailed through smoothly with the cooperation of the families approached and area communities. He said that he was confident in the capability and capacity of the armed forces regarding maintenance of peace in the city inhabiting 20 million citizens.
The Pakistan army has put a division of it’s at the disposal of EC and an ISPR statement stated that the army would meet all security requirements of the EC in coordination with the the civilian and para military security agencies.
The voters list was challenged in the Supreme Court in 2007 by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto alleging that the lists were flawed and influenced by the then President General Pervez Musharraf.
