40 percent of electoral rolls verification completed

From 35 to 40 percent verification of the ongoing electoral rolls has so far been completed across the country, said Secretary Election Commission of Pakistan Ishtiak Ahmed Khan here. Talking to media persons, he said the verification staff has been directed to conduct the process in flood-hit areas relief camps also. However due to massive displacement of people in Sindh the verification campaign could be extended further.
The final decision would be taken by September end. National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) will start publishing Draft Electoral Rolls as soon the verification process completes. The draft voter lists would be displayed for 21 days, most probably in December. The people would be given adequate time to rectify mistakes if any in the electoral rolls, he said.
The final voter lists would be published in April 2012. In the main lists available to returning officers photos of voters would also be affixed, he said. It is pertinent to mention here that the ECP with the help of Nadra is preparing transparent database and the CNIC number would be used as a unique identifier for the existing voters list to discourage the trend of fake voting and to avoid double entry.
It is for the first time in the history of Pakistan that such electoral rolls database is being prepared, which will eliminate the possibility of double and bogus voting. For door to door campaign, the country has been divided into 145000 census block. One Census Block contains 200 to 250 houses or 1200 to 1500 people. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) expects the number of registered voters to be around 83 million. The massive task of door-to-door verification of electoral rolls was started on August 22, involving 0.124 million manpower. The campaign would be completed on September 30.