Electoral rolls likely to increase by 110m till 2018

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The electoral rolls are likely to increase by 110 million till 2018, which was 86.1 million during 2013, as annually around 500,0000 new voters are added to the voters list.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has approved a plan for annual revision of electoral rolls for the year 2016 in which all New National Identity Card (NIC) holders will be made part of the electoral rolls and all voters who have become disqualified (deaths/cancelled NICs) will be excluded from the rolls after their door-to-door verification.

The ECP on Wednesday kicked off a 20-day door-to-door voters’ verification campaign across the country and the voter count is expected to be increased from 93 million to 97-98 million after the revision process.

During the annual revision of electoral rolls campaign, total of 4,831,261 voters would be added to the electoral rolls, whereas approximately 157,860 who have become disqualified (due to deaths/cancelled CNICs) will be weeded out from the list.

According to details, out of the total new voters, 2,378,133 would be added from Punjab, 19,106 from federal area, 724,792 from Sindh, 785,318 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 470,108 from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and 453,804 would be added from Balochistan in the electoral rolls.

Similarly, a total of 95,244 voters would be deleted from the electoral rolls in Punjab, 550 from federal area, 24,343 from Sindh, 17,135 from KP, 3,082 from FATA, whereas 17,506 from Balochistan.

According to the plan, the 20-day door-to-door verification will be carried out from August 10 to 29, which will be followed by 21 days of display process starting from September 20. For this purpose, verifying officials will visit the addresses of the new NIC holders for their verification.

Simultaneously, door-to-door verification of all the deceased voters will also be carried out for deletion of said voters.

After door-to-door verification, the lists will be displayed at designated display centres, offices of district election commissioners, registration officers (ROs) and assistant registration officers (AROs) for public inspection.

List of display centres with contact details of ROs and AROs will also be available on ECP’s official website soon. General public/voters can check their vote status by sending their NIC number to 8300 SMS through their mobile phones.

Applications for enrollment/transfer, correction and deletion of votes could be submitted on prescribed forms at designated display centres, offices of district election commissioners, ROs and AROs.

ECP has issued necessary instructions to all the provincial election commissioners, regional election commissioners, district election commissioners, NADRA and all concerned to complete all the pre-requisites of the revision process at the earliest.

It was also decided that effective monitoring will be carried out throughout the process of annual revision.

To make the revision process successful, general public/voters, media and CSOs are requested to extend their cooperation and support the process.

Earlier, the campaign was scheduled for August 1 but was later delayed for August 10.