Apr 03 , 2015
News
LG election in cantonment areas: NADRA provides final electoral rolls to the Election Commission
* Spokesman says for the first time NADRA has included photos of voters in local bodies electoral rollsISLAMABAD: The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has delivered the final electoral rolls to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to be used for conduct of local government (LG) elections in cantonment areas across the country, a spokesman of NADRA stated here on Thursday.
The spokesman said that NADRA had been given very strict timelines by the Supreme Court for this task, which some of the leading experts of the country considered difficult to meet. He added that NADRA was already working overtime to resolve CNIC backlogs and verification of votes from different constituencies. However by using its citizens’ database and dedicated teams to work on this project, NADRA has completed the task assigned to it for provisioning of updated electoral rolls for local bodies elections in cantonment areas countrywide.
The spokesman said for the first time in the history of local bodies elections NADRA has included photos of voters - living in cantonment areas of the country - in the computerised electoral rolls. The step was taken in light of the demand raised by a number of political parties and civil society organisations with regard to various discrepancies in electoral rolls including multiple or duplicate entries in electoral rolls of previous local bodies election.
In Pakistan, he said, for many years electoral rolls for cantonment areas of the country were prepared only through door-to-door enumeration and there was absence of any authentic data to back the process up. The management of NADRA took this daunting task as a challenge and service to the people of Pakistan, he added. He said, to meet the deadlines, the NADRA chairman directed the staff to work 24/7 and use all its available resources for completion of the task within the stipulated time.
The spokesman further said that during this period, 84,442 fresh CNICs were provided by NADRA to ECP for registration as voters. After the public display process carried out by ECP, NADRA made its data acquisition resources available for digitisation of the Section-18 entries, he stated.
Meanwhile, stating the statistics of the voters the spokesman added that there are 1,010,245 male and 862,494 female voters (total 1,872,739 voters) in the final electoral rolls for cantonment areas, which belong to 29 districts of the country. He said that timely provision of the final electoral rolls has made it possible to receive nomination papers from April 2 in compliance of the orders of the Honourable Supreme Court.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk