More than 11 million eligible voters may be deprived of the right to vote since they were not issued computerised national identity cards (CNICs), or they were residing in houses missed by enumerators, leading to the exclusion of their names from the draft electoral rolls 2011.
According to a survey report by the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), 7.13 per cent of households across Pakistan were unmarked and were believed to have been missed by enumerators during the housing census carried out by the Population Census Organisation (PCO). An estimated 6.5 million citizens who have not yet acquired CNICs, a legal prerequisite for voter registration, have not been included in the draft rolls either.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has undertaken a door-to-door campaign to verify eligible voters which amount to 81 million, according to the data provided by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).
The greatest proportion of unmarked households after the house count was found in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), where 32 per cent of all sampled households were unmarked, according to FAFEN, a non-governmental organisation which is closely associated with electoral reforms.
Extrapolating the data using the projections of Population Demographic Survey 2007 by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, the report stated the number of households missed by PCO enumerators may come to be around 1.56 million across Pakistan. In Balochistan, 0.12 million houses were unmarked, 1.02 million in Punjab, 0.32 million in Sindh and 0.09 million in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).
As many as 82.24 per cent of all unmarked households were located in rural areas and 17.75 per cent in urban areas, according to the FAFEN report, which is based on a survey in July-August 2011. The number may be higher considering the projections are four years old.
According to a cautious estimate going by the population projection figures given by the ministry of population welfare, as many as 10.34 million people may be residing in households that were left unmarked during the house count, which may include 51.5 per cent or 5.33 million eligible voters. There may be 3.5 million voters in Punjab, 1.07 million in Sindh, 0.4 million in Balochistan and 0.35 million in K-P.
According to the latest NADRA data, 87.98 million people have been issued CNICs of which 50.34 million are men and 37.64 million are women. NADRA claims to have issued CNICs to 99 per cent of the people in K-P and the Islamabad Capital Territory, 84 per cent in Fata, 95 per cent in Punjab, 87 per cent in Sindh and 75 per cent in Balochistan. While there may be overlaps between people residing in unmarked houses and those without CNICs, the two groups form a total of around 11.79 million people, which may be indicative of the persons who are missing from the draft electoral rolls 2011, stated the FAFEN report.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 1st, 2011.
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