LAHORE: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday admitted shortcomings in electronic voting machines and biometric verification system before conducting by-elections in NA-120 (Lahore). Polls are scheduled for September 17.
The by-election will be held on September 17 to fill the seat left vacant after the disqualification of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by Supreme Court in the Panama case. The Supreme Court had ruled that the prime minister failed to disclose his un-withdrawn receivables constituting assets from UAE-based Capital FZE, which meant that he was not ‘honest’ and ‘truthful’, as per the Constitution.
A source in the Punjab Election Commission said, “Electronic voting machines and biometric verification system may not verify thumb with oil or something else. Further, the persons with age over 60 may not have points on thumbs and machine will not able to verify them”.
“100 percent accuracy in electronic voting machines and biometric verification system is not possible as the problem related to the reading of a thumb for machines would persist”.
Huda Ali Gohar, spokesperson for the provincial election commission also admitted shortcomings in the electronic voting machines and biometric verification system. However, she said, “Polling staff and Election Commission staff will be trained in a proper way to address issues.”
Talking to Pakistan Today, she clarified that the electronic voting machines and the biometric verification system will be used as a pilot project and trial in NA-120, in addition to the existing manual procedures for voter verification, casting and counting of votes to access the technical efficacy, secrecy, security and financial feasibility of the machines.
Huda further said, “The Commission right now has 150 biometric and 100 electronic voting machines for the trial run that will be used in the National Assembly’s constituency NA-120 and the Punjab Assembly constituency PP-4 (Gujar Khan) where by-elections will be held the same day”.
The ECP has tasked the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to provide it the required data of voters to be uploaded in EVMs and Biometric machines which will be used in the by- polls.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has already filed Dr Yasmeen Rashid as its candidate for the constituency. The PML-N has not yet announced its candidate. However, it is rumoured that Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, the wife of Nawaz Sharif will contest the by-election in NA-120. Yasmin Rashid lost the previous election to Nawaz Sharif in the same constituency in 2013, when only 153,328 out of 295,826 registered voters had used their right to vote with 51.85 per cent turnout in 2013.
NA-120 (Lahore) has a total of 321,633 voters. Among them, 179,505 are male while 142,128 are females. The CP has already announced the polling scheme for the constituency in which there are 220 polling stations. Of these, 103 will be for male voters, 98 for female voters and 19 combined. 568 polling booths will be set up in those polling stations.
As many as 220 presiding officers, 568 assistant presiding officers and 568 polling officers will look after the polling process at the polling stations.
District Returning Officer Tahir Hassan (REC Faisalabad), Returning Officer Muhammad Shahid (DEC Bahawalnagar), three assistant returning officers, (City) Assistant Commissioner Abdullah Khurram, District Education Officer (Secondary) Ihsan-ul-Haq, Assistant Director (Elections) Khalid Mehmood, and commissioner, DC and CCPO will supervise the polling process.
