ISLAMABAD - National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) is needed by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to swallow its words regarding the use of magnetized ink as the latter on Thursday rejected the claims that it did not follow the specimen of the ink prescribed by the former.
The ECP has been angered by the statement of Director General Nadra Syed Muzaffar Ali to an election tribunal in Lahore that ECP did not use the special magnetized ink it had prescribed during 2013 elections.
The commission on Thursday came up with a detailed statement clarifying that it has the ink duly recommended by Nadra saying the ECP had communicated the specification of the ink with Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR).
The ECP recalled minutes of its several meetings with Nadra in order to justify that the commission has used the exact ink prescribed by the database authority in order to reject the allegations that ECP has not used the specified ink during the controversial 2013 polls.
Nadra had spent Rs90 million on purchase of magnetic ink claiming that the use of the special liquid would curb electoral rigging in elections which later proved to be unreadable resulting in a controversy that still goes on.
Nadra has not formally taken back its statement it had submitted before the election tribunal headed Justice (retried) Kazim Ali Malik in which DG Syed Muzaffar had put the blame on ECP for not utilizing the ink it had recommended.
Although ECP on Thursday said Nadra officials during several meetings had taken back its words regarding the specific use of the ink, however, there is no formal statement by the authority over the issue.
A senior ECP official said that Nadra cannot deny its statement before the tribunal as it would prove that the authority had lied before the court of law regarding rigging in 2013 elections.
Nadra had been insisting on using its specified ink to capture fingerprints that could be read automatically for tracing voters' identification that was later proved to be a farce as the ink did not help ECP to identify the voters verification.
"This was the reason that Nadra blamed ECP for not using the ink it had recommended. I think Nadra failed in its project to deliver," an ECP official said.
The then Chairman Nadra Tariq Malik had also disclosed during a meeting that magnetic ink had not been used in two National Assembly constituencies hinting that biometric verification of voters cannot be ensured in the absence of magnetized ink.
Tasadduq Hussain Jilani, the then acting Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), had ordered inquiry into the debacle in order to ascertain the number of constituencies where magnetic ink was not used.
However, the inquiry could not see light of the day due to conflicting statements of departments engaged in supervision of elections 2013 and the blame game among various government departments.
According to a government official, the ECP being election conducting authority has to respond to all queries relating to polls as the commission was ultimately supposed to meet all formalities.
On Thursday, ECP said that PCSIR had confirmed that it had manufactured the ink in accordance with the specification of Nadra and that the same sample was delivered to respective provincial commissions.
It means that ECP is passing the buck to other departments by arguing that the commission was not a manufacturing body rather it functioned as post office for dispatching the ink prepared by PCSIR and Nadra.