Islamabad -  The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has failed to bring into use its electronic voting machines (EVMs) in bye-elections held in 2016 and they may be used next year under a proposed pilot project.

The EVMs were procured on the directives of the prime minister in the light of recommendations of the electoral reforms committee of the parliament. The machines were supposed to be used in the bye-elections from September but the plan did not materialise owing to unknown reasons.

Despite repeated attempts on Sunday, the ECP spokesperson could not be reached for his comments over the delay in using the EVMs.

The ECP had floated tenders seeking bids from reputed national and international firms for procurement of 400 EVMs by June 20, 2016.

The procurement of 400EVMs was part of the ECP’s pilot project to conduct by-elections on vacant seats of national and provincial assemblies and local government elections.

The effort aims at ensuring greater degree of transparency in voting system by replacing the magnetic ink-based paper with modern technology.            

The ECP was hit by a controversy when it decided to procure e-voting machines or biometric voting machines (BVMs) in May 2014 when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa demanded electronic voting in the province.

The ECP did try to switch over to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) proposed e-voting in Peshawar, but that apparently did not work and led to a deep controversy between the ECP and the NADRA. The NADRA had unveiled the electronic voting system to help stop bogus voting in elections.

The system aims at ensuring transparent elections in Pakistan to prevent casting of a duplicate vote. According to that, all voters were to be verified through their thumb impressions in real time so that no one would be able to cast a vote of a person not present in a polling station.

Former NADRA chairman Tariq Malik in a media briefing had unveiled salient features of the system to tackle loopholes in the voting system.

The Rs1 billion system consisted of three units. The first unit - “Voter Identification Unit” - was to identify voters through CNICs, fingerprints of a voter were to be verified biometrically through NADRA database.

The second unit - “Vote Casting Unit”- upon successful identification through first the unit, this unit was to display list of candidates with their election symbols of respective constituency.

Voter was supposed to choose candidate of his choice. Selection of candidate by voter was to be recorded in local database as well as on printed ballot. Third unit - “Result Management Unit” - was related to the digital results prepared by counting printed ballots.

The former NADRA chairman had claimed that this technology would get rid of all the mess created by magnetic ink which costs about Rs2 to Rs3 billion in every election.

According to him the proposed system to ensure that if a voter fails to confirm his identity through thumb impression, he/she would not be allowed to proceed to vote during polling.