Election hold-up?: Karachi voters’ verification hits snags

Door-to-door exercise to start on Jan 10 now.

ISLAMABAD:

The process of re-verification of voters’ list in Karachi is likely to be delayed after election commission authorities on Thursday decided to include some more security features in the forms used for the verification process.

Sources privy to the development told The Express Tribune that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has decided to revise the format of the forms that will be used by the enumerators for the door-to-door verification process.

“Now every form would include thumb impressions of the voters and the official assigned to carry out the verification process. Similarly the supervisors would have to sign and put their thumb impressions on every single form to make them credible,” an official of the ECP revealed.

Under the schedule announced on December 21, the process of door-to-door verification of voters was to start on January 5, 2013 which is now likely to start on January 10, sources said.



Sources added that this would cause a delay in meeting the earlier deadline of concluding the whole process by February 24, 2013.

The decision of adding new features comes a day after the meeting of election authorities with the army chief and NADRA’s chairman.

Sources said once the ECP finalises the new format of the form and delivers it to NADRA, it would take NADRA another week to print these forms.

It was further revealed that security agencies have asked the ECP to provide them a list of the “most sensitive areas” so that they can make arrangements to provide security to the enumerators.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2012.