ISLAMABAD - National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) Thursday said that it had delivered final electoral rolls to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to be used for conduct of local government elections in Cantonment areas across the country.
According to Nadra record, there are total 1,872,739 voters in the final electoral rolls for cantonment areas including 1,010,245 male and 862,494 female voters, which belong to 29 districts of country.
The spokesman of Nadra said that the authority had been given very strict timelines by the Supreme Court of Pakistan for this task, which some of the leading experts of the country considered difficult to meet.
He further said that Nadra was already working overtime to resolve CNIC backlogs and verification of votes from different constituencies. However, by using its citizens' database and dedicated teams to work on this project, Nadra has completed the task assigned to it for provisioning of updated Electoral Rolls for local bodies elections in cantonment areas countrywide.
He said for the first time in the history of local bodies elections Nadra has included pictures of each and every voter, living in cantonment areas of the country, on all computerized local body electoral rolls. This step was taken in light of the demand raised by a number of political parties and civil society organizations regarding various discrepancies in electoral rolls due to fake, multiple or duplicate entries in previous local bodies voters' lists.
In Pakistan, for many years, electoral rolls of cantonment areas of the country were prepared only through door-to-door enumeration and there was absence of any authentic data to back the process up.
The spokesman said that during this period, 84,442 fresh CNICs were provided by Nadra to ECP for registration as voter. After public display process carried out by ECP, Nadra made its data acquisition resources available for digitisation of Section -18 entries, he stated.
He said that timely provision of Final Electoral Rolls has made it possible to receive nomination papers in compliance of orders of Supreme Court that has started from 2nd April 2015.