Electoral rolls: Voters list to be available in print by month’s end

Poll commission says this year’s list will be free of errors.

ISLAMABAD:

A full electoral list carrying the names of 84.3 million voters will be available in print by end of this month, officials said on Thursday.

According to officials in the Election Commission and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), the two organisations involved in compiling the new computerised voters’ list, printing of electoral rolls for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Fata has already been completed while the process is nearing completion in Sindh.

There are 12 million voters registered in K-P, 3 million in Balochistan while the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan has a total of 1.6 million voters.

Once the printing process for 19.53 million voters for Sindh is complete, it will start working on the list for Punjab.

Punjab — which makes up over 60 per cent of the total population of the country — has 48 million registered voters. The province also witnessed the highest increase of four million new voters compared to the previous list of 2007-08.

The voters’ list for 2007-08 had 37% unverified entries, including bogus and multiple entries. This year’s list — based on the computerised system — will be error free, according to the Election Commission.

Election authorities say that an average of 15,000 people are getting CNICs and are registered as voters.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2012.