Pakistan has 12.4m more male voters

ECP survey shows big gap between registered voters of two genders

ISLAMABAD. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has issued the report of a pilot project for eliminating gender gap among the voters. According to the report, there is a huge gap of over 12 million people between the number of male and female registered voters in the country.

The pilot project was conducted in 20 districts of the country covering 21, tehsils and 230 census blocks.

Prior to the survey, the ECP conducted a comprehensive training of all the relevant regional election commissioners, district election commissioners, registration officers, and data entry operators.

It had developed a set of data collection instruments and recording and reporting formats to ensure standardized data collection and analysis. During the pilot project the ECP covered 32, 970 households and contacted 133,267 people of age 18 and above in a door to door survey.

The research showed that 81% of people above 18 years of age – 108,218 people – had valid Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs).

The 19% people who did not have CNICs included 77% women and 23% men. In Punjab, the people who did not have CNICs include 77% women and 23% men.

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In Sindh the people who did not have CNICs included 74% women and 26% men; in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) the people who did not hold CNICs comprised 84% women and 16% men while in Balochistan respectively 71% and 29% of the total people sans CNICs were women and men.

According to the survey, the people did not get CNICs due to inaccessible National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) offices, economic constraints, lack of awareness about importance of CNICs and voters lists and socio-cultural constraints.

The ECP said due to its campaign, the number of voters phenomenally increased. Between July 2018 to December 2020, the ECP registered 9,7 93, 344 voters 50.41% of which were women and 49. 48% of which were men.