Election laws amendment bill to be tabled in next National Assembly session

The Election Laws (amendment) Bill 2011 is likely to be tabled in next session of National Assembly for making valid Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) mandatory for registration as voter or casting vote.
Talking to APP on Sunday official sources said that election commission is working on verification and up gradation of its database as the old identity cards holders were also included in it.
They informed that the first phase of the verification of Election Commissions voters list would start on April 5 throughout the country in which representatives of the commission would hold door to door visits and compile data of families' heads.
"After getting this information we would acquire list of all the families from National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and prepare preliminary database for the next phase", sources informed.
They said that in the next step this preliminary data would be verified through door to door visit so that accurate information would be included in the final list, adding, all this process would be completed till December 31.
The unique feature of this updated data would help checking double entry of any voter as repetition of any CNIC number is not possible in it, they informed.
They added that another flaw in the old voters list was that a person who has registered himself in one city can also get himself registered in another city also, but in this new system when a person apply for allowing him right to vote from any other city, his previous registration would be automatically cancelled.
According to aims and objectives of the Election Laws (amendment) Bill 2011, the bill would ensure security and integrity of the database of electoral rolls and to bring the provisions in conformity with certain amendments in the Electoral Rolls Act 1974, he noted.
With the insertion of Section 30-A in the Electoral Rolls Act, 1974, they apprised that any employee of Election Commission would be liable to imprisonment up to five years or fine up to Rs five million or both who discloses or misuses any information or data contained in the electoral rolls database without being so authorised by the Commission.
Under the new Bill, local commission system would be adopted for recording of evidence for speedy trial of the election petitions by the Election Tribunal.