Right to vote: SC orders registration of overseas Pakistani voters

Country’s top court directs NADRA to deliver NICs to citizens abroad before polls begin.

ISLAMABAD:

The Supreme Court has directed authorities to devise a mechanism before the general elections to ensure that all overseas Pakistani voters are registered and can exercise their ‘right to vote’.

The directives were given to the Ministry of Overseas Pakistani and National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) on Tuesday to assist the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) so that foreign-based Pakistani voters can be registered before the upcoming polls begin.

A three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, was hearing the case relating to grant of permission to overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes.

The country’s top court directed Nadra to ensure that all the National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP) are delivered to them before the start of the elections so they can cast their votes.



The apex court also asked the government to speed up the proposed legislative business for overseas Pakistani voters’ registration while giving several proposals on how to ensure voting rights to the citizens living abroad.

During the proceedings, the attorney general (AG) informed the court that a draft bill for granting voting rights to overseas Pakistanis was ready and will be moved before the National Assembly any day now. AG Irfan Qadir assured the court that the overseas Pakistani ministry had been engaged in devising voting procedures for expatriates for sometime now.

The bench, however, was informed that the complete voting list of the entire country along with ballot papers of 272 constituencies had to be dispatched to each Pakistani mission to be converted into polling stations.

The court suggested that the government convert all the Pakistani missions in different cities of the world into polling stations to facilitate the expatriates living there.

Further, the ECP, Ministries of Interior and Overseas Pakistanis were ordered to hold a meeting and devise a mechanism in this regard and submit its outcome in court by February 22.



Munir A Piracha, counsel for the ECP, informed the bench that the election commission had no objections over overseas Pakistanis’ right to vote. Piracha told the bench that a total of four millions overseas Pakistani voters were currently registered in various countries. In response, the chief justice said that registration of others should also be ensured before elections because there were more than 7.5 million Pakistanis abroad.

The chief justice also deplored the fact that a majority of these expatriates had no idea whether their votes had been registered or not.

He said that these voters can send their sealed ballot papers to the ECP, which should be dispatched the same day to the concerned Returning Officer before the polls begin in order to avoid any foul play.

The hearing was adjourned till February 22.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2013.