ECP expects to gear up for polls by next year

Says registration of eligible female voters to kick off in April

ISLAMABAD: The country’s top poll supervisory body is likely to complete all preparations for the 2018 general elections by next year, and to minimise gender disparity under a campaign to register eligible female voters in April.

Election Commission of Pak­istan (ECP) Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad shared on Thursday the body’s plans about the next general elections, as well as a pilot study of biometric voting system and its challenges with the National Assembly Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs at the Parliament House.



The ECP secretary told the panel’s members that the supervisory body sought to ‘avoid confusion and eleventh-hour hassle’, adding that planning, training, coordination and monitoring were under way.

He plans to write to the chief secretaries of all the provinces and seek lists of over 80,000 staff members for the electoral exercise.

He said the staff would be trained after being vetted to ensure they were not affiliated with any political party so that transparency could be guaranteed. “The trained staff will be able to conduct the next two general elections.”

The election planning committee is working on the mechanism and sorting through other issues while the ECP plans to print 122 million ballot papers for the next polls, he added.



This prompted MNA Nisar Ahmad Jatt to ask the secretary how the body had finalised the number (before the census).

The ECP official replied that the figure was decided upon an estimate of registered voters and the number of ballots cast in the 2013 elections.



ECP Information Technology DG Khizer Aziz told the NA panel about the advantages and disadvantages of electronic voting machines (EVMs).

He said the new machines would help cast votes, count the ballots and eliminate the possibility of vote rejections.

Secretary Muhammad added that the polling body had forwarded a summary to PM Nawaz Sharif to purchase some 400 EVMs and try them out in the by-elections of November and December.

On the flip side, the IT official said, the machines could be cheated, hacked or tampered with.

Meanwhile, MNA Shahida Rehmani asked what the ECP was doing to minimise gender disparity among voters.

The secretary told her that the electoral body would start a special campaign next month to register eligible female voters, adding that a cell headed by a woman was being established for the purpose.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2016.