ISLAMABAD: Due to National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA)’s inability to make Computerised National Identity Card (CNICs) in limited time, around 12 million women will remain unable to cast votes in the upcoming general elections in 2018.
In the revised voters’ list of 97.02 million registered voters, 54.60 million [or 56.27 per cent] are men while 42.42 million [43.73 per cent] are women, showing a gap of more than 12 million.
These women will be unable to cast votes as they have turned 18 in the last few years and still do not have their CNICs.
The Sindh Assembly on November 23 adopted a resolution recommending the federal government to take steps to register all eligible women voters in the electoral rolls. It was claimed in the resolution that there are around 13 million unregistered women.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in its meeting on November 17 announced the launch of a special campaign to register eligible women in the voters’ list for the 2018 elections so that all the concerned women have their CNICs before April 2018.
The voter’s list for general elections will be frozen in July-August next year. However, according to reports, the current infrastructure of the National Registration Centres (NRCs) and Mobile Registration Vans (MRVs) is not sufficient to get CNICs of these women ready in time before the elections.
NADRA has a total of 539 NRCs, 234 MRVs and 14 women-only NRCs.
However, according to Nadra officials, the centres are already overburdened with work and it sometimes takes over 45 minutes for them to process just one application. It takes 30 days on average to print the normal card, 21 days in case of urgent cards and a week in case of executive cards.
Keeping all of these issues in mind, it would be virtually impossible for NADRA to come up with more than 12 million cards in such short period of time.
