Karachi votes: ECP will commence verification on January 5

Process to unfold in presence of army and FC; will be completed on Feb 24.

ISLAMABAD:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced on Friday that it will start the verification process of Karachi’s votes from January 5 in the presence of the army and the Frontier Constabulary (FC).

The ECP said that it will complete the door-to-door verification campaign of the voters’ list in 18 days.

On December 14, the commission had dispatched letters to the defence and interior secretaries to provide the services of the army and FC. Having received the green light from relevant quarters, the ECP announced that door-to-door visits will start from January 5 in “the presence of the army and FC,” and the process will end on January 22.

“On [the] close of each day of [the] verification exercise, each in-charge/Army Officer of a group of verifying officials (VO), will get a summary-sheet prepared from each VO containing information as to how many houses were visited; [the] number of persons verified and the number of forms of each category filled in, and will prepare a consolidated summary after completion of the exercise and hand over the same to his next immediate senior officer for onward transmission to the ECP. Verifying Officials [will be] in the presence of [the] Army/FC,” said the statement issued by the ECP. According to the schedule, the verification of votes will be completed in 69 days.

The verification process had already started from December 17 when data collection regarding the district and census block-wise statistics of the total voters of the existing electoral rolls had started.

Afterwards, the process of printing and delivery of the lists of electoral rolls for a door-to-door verification as per the prescribed format would be completed in 14 days from December 17 to December 30.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2012.