Amhad Mahmood.-
LAHORE: Of the registered 20.12 million voters in the 12 Punjab districts, where local council polls are being held on Saturday, several may find problems in locating their vote and polling station because of anomalies in voter lists and polling scheme.
The irregularities in voter lists cropped up when the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) adopted bloc codes (division of area in a certain way) to prepare computerised lists, arranged by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics for population census in 2012. But the census was left incomplete.
Subsequently, voter lists were prepared on the basis of the 1998 census with new bloc codes, containing different placement or numbering of mauzas from the previous one.
An ECP official, who requested not to be named for not being authorised to respond to media queries, held the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) responsible for vague addresses of voters in lists, when he was shown such entries running in hundreds in just one union council of Gulberg in Lahore.
“You may find such entries in each union council,” admitted the official, explaining that Nadra authorities had asked them to provide the identity card number of just one member of a family and they would pick from their record of family trees all other information.
Nadra, he said, included short addresses (just carrying the name of the locality) of the voters without identifying their real locations. This created problems for even local body candidates to locate and approach their constituents.
The issue, said he, was also disturbing the ECP when on complaints of omissions and/or (bogus) additions it could not verify the data as due to vague addresses the voters concerned could not be approached.
The problem would be resolved in the lists for 2018 general election, he said.
Anomalies in polling schemes are another hurdle left to be overcome by candidates and voters as many polling stations have reportedly been set up outside the relevant wards and even union councils in certain cases in violation of the instruction issued by the ECP in this respect.
“We haven’t been given description of wards so how we could ensure establishment of polling stations in wards concerned in the absence of boundaries of wards,” said an official of the local government department.
He said that since notification of the constituencies and polling stations he had seen dozens of complaints about the polling stations situation outside wards and even relevant union councils.
The ECP authorities are trying to amend such anomalies at least for second and third phase of polls.
Up to 40,101 candidates are trying their luck in the first phase of local polls in 12 districts – Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujrat, Nankana Sahib, Bhakkar, Chakwal, Kasur, Okara, Pakpattan, Vehari, Lodhran and Bahawalnagar.
At least 16,266 polling stations have been set up for 11,345,245 male and 8,776,676 female voters, while around 45 million ballot papers have been got printed.
The ECP says 3,551 polling stations are highly sensitive and 8,300 are sensitive.
Fuente: http://www.dawn.com/news/1216313/anomalies-await-voters-candidates
