Verified voter lists: ECP seeks to successfully persuade Supreme Court

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is of the view that it would seek to successfully persuade Supreme Court of Pakistan not to pressurise the commission to complete the work in relation to new or verified electoral rolls by February 19.
According to sources, the ECP would put before the apex court an order passed by SC in 2007, in which the commission was accused of inducting 37 million dubious voters in the electoral rolls. These rolls were used in February 2008 general elections and bye-elections thereafter.
The ECP will also pray to court that while preparing electoral rolls in 2007 on the basis of computerised national identity cards (CNICs), the number of voters decreased from 70 million to 52 million. This prompted the then Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto, to approach the apex court, seeking inclusion of the names of voters left out of the electoral rolls because of CNIC condition.
The court directed the commission to waive off the condition of CNIC and include the names of people who had been deprived of exercising their right to vote, after scrutiny by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), within a month.
The ECP is of the view that following the SC order, the commission was left with no other option but to enlist thousands of fake voters in haste without verification. Besides, the ECP officials said the list could not be prepared before end of May because such an important job could not be completed in haste. They said the Nadra would complete data processing by the end of January after which the draft electoral rolls would have to be put on display for three weeks.
"Display of voter lists is a legal requirement to provide public an opportunity to rectify any mistakes or error in the draft list, and such legal requirements cannot be annulled," they added. They were of the view that before the display, printing list of around 80 million people would take at least two weeks, and added that once the process of receiving complaints was completed, it would need another three weeks to remove the errors, if any, to make the electoral rolls acceptable to all.