ISLAMABAD - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has formally withdrawn his party's demand regarding introduction of biometric machines for Local Bodies (LB) polls and has agreed to conduct the exercise using the old system.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday held a meeting under the chair of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza that was also attended by the chief minister KP.
Sources said the ECP officials convinced the chief minister that under the current circumstances and challenges, it was impossible to hold local bodies' polls in KP under biometric machines. Instead, the old conventional method would be used to conduct elections in the province, the polling system that has been criticised by Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), seeking its replacement.
The KP Assembly had made legislation few months back about introduction of biometric machines to conduct LB polls. "The chief minister during the meeting also complained despite making legislation for new electoral technology, the ECP dragged the KP government to the old system," an ECP official said.
The meting was informed after detailed discussions that the decision to use biometric system could not be implemented due to various issues, including procurement, operation and security of the biometric data in biometric system.
"The ECP and chief minister KP today agreed to hold polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on conventional system. The chief minister withdrew the demand of biometric system," an ECP spokesman said.
After the controversy over electoral technology is over between the ECP and KP government, the officials said the main hurdles had been cleared in the way of holding LB polls in the province.
The ECP will issue schedule in April and has already floated tenders for printing of ballot papers. The polling process will involve printing of 100 million ballot papers in seven different colours.
A well-informed source told The Nation that the chief minister requested the ECP to introduce biometric machines in Peshawar at least for the face saving of PTI but the ECP officials argued that it was a same challenge for the commission whether to use biometric machines in one constituency or the whole province.