Stand and be [dis]counted: Election office acknowledges voter lists mixed up in areas

PPP, ANP unhappy with verification of voter lists, MQM satisfied.

KARACHI: The election office has acknowledged that some of the voter lists for some suburban and city areas for Karachi have been mixed up during verification. 

“There are some genuine complaints,” said Sindh election commissioner Sono Khan Baloch on Monday, referring to bogus voters. He was paid a visit by upset Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Awami National Party (ANP) leaders. “We are sorting out the problem by referring the voters to the relevant blocks and towns,” Baloch added.

The delegation from both parties, the PPP led by Lal Bux Bhutto, said they wanted the process to be stopped.

“We raised two main points - one regarding the constituencies which are wrongly mentioned in draft electoral rolls in which the [phrase] ‘Metropolitan Corporation Karachi’ has been added,” said Bhutto. “The constituency is now called by the new name of ‘Metropolitan Corporation Karachi Orangi/Korangi etc. We showed them the 1974 rules that do not mention [the] naming of constituencies [in such a way].”

The second objection was on registering the voters of one area in the list for other areas. This way a large number of voters of other areas have been registered in areas which are PPP strongholds, he said. “We are surprised how this all happened. Why have the voters of permanent residents of Liaquatabad, Lalukhet and Karimabad been registered in Malir, Keamari, and Bin Qasim towns. This is a conspiracy [to turn us into a minority],” he said.

They have already written to the chief election commissioner, demanding the process be stopped or changed, otherwise they will have no choice but to challenge it.

For his part, Sono Khan Baloch told The Express Tribune that they would share the PPP’s complaints at an upcoming meeting of the Election Commission on September 29. But this is one day before their September 30 deadline. The work started on August 22. The electoral rolls were printed by the National Database and Registration Authority.

When asked about the number of verified electoral rolls, Baloch said that information could not be shared just yet.

The PPP’s Syed Najmi Alam felt that the verification process has been weak and hardly 30% of voters have been verified in Karachi and 10% in other districts of Sindh. “It is not possible for the Election Commission to complete its task on time. We have demanded they extend the deadline till November, given the heavy rains and flooding,” he said, adding that more than eight million people have been affected in lower Sindh where only 10% of voters have been verified.

The provincial election commissioner endorsed Alam’s view, saying that they would propose extending the deadline.

Bhutto said the draft electoral rolls prepared by NADRA were full of anomalies, as the total number of voters, as shown on it, has declined from 19.7 million to 10.5 million instead of showing an increase because the population has gone up.

The ANP’s Bashir Jan said that officials from Nadra, the election commission and census department were blaming each other for errors in the rolls. When they contacted the Election Commission about the irregularities, it said they were following the Nadra database that was getting its information from the census department. But census officials have denied this, he said.

So far, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement has expressed no reservations over the process and party leaders refuted reports of bogus voters. “We do not believe in a conspiracy to convert any party into a minority,” said Wasay Jalil. He said that the Election Commission has been following the NADRA database and census department, which according to Jalil was accurate and could not be tampered with.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th,  2011.