Number of voters may jump to 113m, says ECP official – Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: As the Electoral Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has asked provincial election commissioners to update voter lists, the number of registered voters is likely to increase from the existing 109 million to 113 million, it emerged Sunday.

A senior ECP official said Dawn that the provisional electoral lists would be published and displayed at the level of the trade union council in November to invite objections in view of the upcoming local government surveys in the provinces. He said he expected an increase of four million voters on the updated lists. Voters, he added, would have three weeks to review the provisional lists for corrections.

The official said the deadline for local agencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had expired on January 27 and August 28, respectively.

He said that the PK Assembly had enacted a new local government law and was in the process of making rules. He said that after the issuance of a notification in this regard, the delimitation process would begin in the province. Likewise, he added, Punjab had passed a new law and rules were being framed.

In response to a question, the official said the delimitation exercise could take six to seven months to complete. He said that so far it had not been decided whether the vote for local government elections would take place on the same day in all provinces or would be staggered.

Provisional electoral lists will be shown in November for local agency surveys.

Currently, he said, work was being done to eliminate an anomaly on the list that shows registered voters at a third address, in addition to their permanent and temporary addresses mentioned on their national computerized identity cards. The number of those voters was 11 million at the beginning of the process, he added.

The official, who sought anonymity since he was not authorized to speak with the media, said that before the elections to the provincial assembly in the former Tribal Areas (Fata) administered by the federal government, all voters in the respective constituencies had been registered at their permanent or temporary addresses. .

Likewise, he added, it was held in all electoral districts where partial elections were held. He said the PCE wanted to complete the process before local government elections in the country.

According to a decision taken in December, all voters registered at a "third address" other than their temporary or permanent addresses would be registered in the electoral area of ​​their permanent addresses after the initial deadline of December 31, 2018.

According to Section 27 of the Elections Law, a person will be considered a resident of an electoral area if his temporary or permanent address in the CNIC issued by the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) was in that electoral area. Subsection 4 of Section 27 of the Elections Act says: “However, anything contained in this section or any other provision of this Chapter, the registration of a voter at an address other than the permanent or temporary address mentioned in your national identity document will remain valid until you request the transfer of your vote or the modification or renewal of your national identity document, in which case your vote will be registered in accordance with the temporary or permanent address mentioned in the national identity document ".

However, a clause with the subsection says: "Whenever this subsection (4), including this clause, is omitted on December 31, 2018".

Posted in Dawn, September 30, 2019