LG polls: Ballot printing may be put in private hands

Govt presses don’t have capacity, says Sher Afgan

ISLAMABAD:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) might have to outsource to private printers the responsibility of printing the ballot papers for the local government elections in Sindh and Punjab – a move that is likely to land the polls in another controversy. The decision was taken in a meeting at the ECP headquarters on Thursday.

Sher Afgan, the commission’s acting secretary, told the media that the government’s printing presses did not have the capacity to print all the ballot papers that would be required for the September 20 elections in the two provinces.

The ECP is faced with the challenge of printing on time some 300 million ballot papers for Punjab and about 110 million for Sindh.

Afgan said that once the schedule for the polls is issued after completing the delimitation process in Sindh and Punjab, the ECP would have 20 to 25 days to print all the ballot papers for the two provinces.

Officials of the Printing Corporation of Pakistan told the commission that even if they worked at their maximum capacity, they would be able to print around 70 million ballots.

Among other government presses, the Security Printing Press of Pakistan and the Postal Foundation Press can print 10 to 15 million each.

Afgan said that after assessing the situation, the ECP would have to decide if it should hire the services of private printers to complete the task.

The commission is already dealing with criticism for the purported printing of ballots by private companies in the 2013 general elections.

Sindh and Punjab are yet to provide the ECP with data required to mark the boundaries for the local councils, or delimitation, one of the key prerequisites to start the polls process.

The electoral body blames the willy-nilly attitude of both the provincial governments for the long delay.

The ECP had written to the Sindh government last week to provide maps and other data related to delimitation, including the number of seats of union councils, union committees, wards in municipal committees and town committees, so that their boundaries could be marked.

This shows that the commission still does not have even the basic information on its table to start the delimitation process in the province.

Similarly, on March 3, the ECP had notified the schedule to conduct delimitation in Punjab. Under this schedule the electoral body would start the process on March 16 and complete it by July 28.

Once the process of delimitation completes, the commission would have to reconcile the voters list in accordance with the new delimitation data.

Following that, the ECP would issue the schedule for polls. Once the final list of candidates is published as per the schedule, the printing of ballot papers would start.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2015.