How the votes went on an (electoral) roll

People have been registered by their permanent addresses outside Karachi.

KARACHI: The saga of voting rights at a permanent address or workplace residence does not seem to be settling down. While the provincial election commissioner has refuted the allegations that the voters in Karachi were registered on their permanent home addresses “under pressure”, most of the opposition parties think otherwise.

Ever since the Election Commission of Pakistan reported a significant decline in registered voters in Sindh in the 2012 electoral rolls as compared to 2008, there have been cries of foul play. The problem appears to be that the old voter lists were compiled according to the voters’ temporary home addresses, whereas the new lists have been made on their permanent addresses. “It is totally wrong that a majority of voters have been registered on their permanent home addresses,” said Sindh election commissioner Sono Khan Baloch while talking to The Express Tribune. “We are legally and morally bound to register the vote of the person where he/she is presently living and working.”

According to the Electoral Rolls Act 1974, the vote should be registered where people are living.

Refuting the reports that majority of the votes were dislocated from Karachi to other places as part of a conspiracy, the Sindh election commissioner said that if anyone living in Karachi opted to register their vote on their permanent address, the office would have no choice but to register it as the commission has no authority to decide on its own.

“The voters whose present addresses could not be verified have been moved out of the city,” he said, appealing to people to go to the election commission’s offices for corrections.

The procedure is simple. For instance, if anyone working in Karachi has had his vote transferred to Peshawar, he can fill a change of address form along with a copy of his national identify card for verification and the election commission will make the correction within 24 hours.

More than 100,000 votes that were displaced from Karachi “by mistake” to other places have been relocated following complaints filed by different people and parties.

In Sindh, the number of registered voters stands at 18.4 million with around 6.8 million in Karachi. “This is not the final figure as registrations and corrections will continue until the election schedule is announced,” the provincial election commissioner added.

Whatever the explanations put up by Sono Khan Baloch, the “aggrieved” political parties accuse the election commission of a “biased approach” and working “under pressure”.

The election commission is delaying the corrections of voters shifted to other districts of Sindh, alleged Ali Hassan Chandio, the Sindh National Movement president, while talking to The Express Tribune.

His party’s two activists, who contested local government elections from Gulshan-e-Iqbal Town, have had their votes moved to Benazirabad district. “This has all been done on the basis of permanent addresses of our workers, who have been living in Karachi for the past twenty years,” Chandio said. “From [the housing] census to electoral rolls, the whole process was hijacked by the activists of a political party.”

A similar complaint came from the Awami National Party, which claims to be the most affected party. During the voter registration, the party had started a mobilisation campaign asking people to register in Karachi.

“A majority of our voters in Landhi, Banaras, Baldia, Keamari and even Sohrab Goth have been shifted to cities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on the basis of their permanent addresses,” claimed Bashir Jan. “The provincial election commission is not listening to us,” he said. “We will be turned into a minority even in the Pakhtun-dominated areas.”

A majority of these people come to Karachi for seasonal work and should have their votes registered in their own areas, believes Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Wasim Aftab. Rejecting the notion that his party’s men may have influenced the registration of the electoral rolls, he held the election commission and Nadra responsible for moving around the voters without their consent. “Many votes in MQM-dominated areas have also been registered in other provinces,” he said. “We also want to know who should we blame; the election commission or the [political] parties?”

Voters in Sindh

 

District                    Voters   

BADIN                   564,700

KARACHI              6,802,497

DADU                    552,644

GHOTKI                536,303

HYDERABAD         922,214

JACOBABAD         382,502

JAMSHORO           358,397

KASHMORE          309,364

KHAIRPUR            776,283

LARKANA             555,281

MATIARI               280,456

MIRPURKHAS       568,437

N.FEROZE             522,094

SANGHAR            751,755

SHAHDADKOT     462,574

BENAZIRABAD     596,763

SHIKARPUR          471,192

SUKKUR                504,665

T. ALLAHYAR       265,831

T. M. KHAN          208,100

THARPARKAR      450,296

THATTA               606,971

UMERKOT            323,724

 

Total                  17,773,043    Source: ECP website

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2012.