Anyone involved in rioting will have to face judicial consequences: PM

ISLAMABAD  -  Caretaker Prime Minister An­waar ul Haq Kakar has reaf­firmed the government’s com­mitment to ensure fair and transparent elections in the country. In an exclusive inter­view with Voice of America, he said if anyone is involved in ri­oting or arson, they have to face the judicial consequences, and whatever the outcome of that process is, all of us have to abide by it. When asked about the re­patriation of illegal Afghan na­tionals, the prime minister said we want to have a regulated movement interaction with Af­ghanistan as a state. This is the prime target. Re­sponding to another ques­tion, the prime minis­ter rejected sale of arms to Ukraine. The Election Commission of Pakistan [ECP] has almost finalised to generate results of gen­eral elections through a new Election Management System (EMS) The top elec­tion regulatory body for the first time will perform elec­tion results on this newly designed Election Manage­ment System [EMS], ac­cording to the experts. As previous experience of the Result Management Sys­tem [RTS] created much confusion and controver­sy. The RTS in the previous general elections crashed in some of the constituen­cies at the night of elections day. The fault in the system was considered as a plan­ning to rig the polls. Sourc­es said that because of the controversy due to the RTS system [android-based ap­plication] it was decided not to use it for the election results. The RTS system was developed for immedi­ate disbursement of results from the polling station. From February 2024 polls the Election Commission of Pakistan is in the planning to replace RTS with EMS as all necessary arrange­ments have been made on it. Sources said that the pi­lot project of EMS with the name Result Management System (RMS) was expe­rienced in the local lev­el polls successfully. The ECP has already trained its staff to better acquaint them with the new system, they said, mentioning that in this newly introduced system data [names, num­bers etc], registered vot­ers can be entered by the trained staff. The presid­ing officers (PO) will trans­mit polling station results to returning officers (RO). These ROs, equipped with a team of four data entry operators each, will pre­pare the results and submit them to the ECP through both digital and manual channels. The total num­ber of registered voters in the country eligible to cast a vote are around 127mil­lion, previously the figure was 106million, according to the latest statistics. As per the estimates, the num­ber of women increased from 46.73 million in 2018 to 58.47 million at pres­ent. The number of men increased from 59.22mil­lion in 2018 to 68.50m, re­vealed the recently con­ducted data.