ISLAMABAD: The media’s access to age-wise information of electoral polls poses a potential threat to the voters’ data security as per the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
ECP had earlier denied free access to credentials of candidates.
Following this, ECP sent a letter to NADRA chief in which it stated that some news reports mentioned information on age and gender in electoral rolls which it suspected could have been leaked by NADRA.
NADRA officials denied releasing any data to media persons or members of political parties. It further stated that the segregated data according to ages and genders was easily available to the general public in the past.
Earlier, the ECP had decided not to put nomination papers of contesting candidates on its website. In the general elections of 2013, ECP had published nomination forms of all contesting candidates on its website for public scrutiny. ECP’s letter insisted that media’s access to data supported apprehensions that other data might have also been shared.