There is a lack of trust between the people and the Chief Election Commissioner's office, which has caused resentment among the masses against the missing of 30 million names from the electoral rolls.
Speakers said this during a discussion session on the subject 'flawed electoral rolls: gaps and remedies' at the Sustainable Policy Development Institute here on Monday.
They urged the people to immediately check their names in the voter lists by Tuesday- the last day for scrutiny of the lists at display centres and get their names registered if not found their names.
The Executive Director of the Centre for Civic Education Zafarullah Khan chaired the session, while Pildat's Executive Director Ahmad Bilal Mahbub and Pattan Development Organisation's Chief Sarwar Bari also participated in the discussion.
They strongly advocated a number of proactive remedies the Chief Election Commissioner in line with the Constitution, which clearly defined the responsibility of the CEC for updating the electoral list each year.
They urged the CEC to act promptly even if it took a special session of the Parliament to amend the law, which bars additions in the voter lists after July 3.
Hence, Nadra should be authorised to prepare CNICs swiftly before the announcement of the election date. In this regard, Bilal pointed to Nadra's capacity of preparing 90,000 cards daily. But it was not working to full capacity and preparing only 20,000 CNICs.
A lack of transparency had over taken the CEC's office since the beginning of the work on preparing the voter lists, he said.
The CEC office had overlooked the Nadra data. All it needed was to include a photograph in the List. The photograph of each person was also available in Nadra database, but CEC's office missed this opportunity. Instead, CEC's office assigned the preparation of the list to a consortium of three organisations, including the USAID, the TLC and Techcos. There was complete lack of transparency. 'One did not understand the role played in the triangular arrangement between the GOP, the USAID and the CEC, involving big money to the tune of about Rs 1 billion.'
At one stage, a participant brought in the element of voters' apathy but Bari refuted the argument, and gave illustrations of visiting a number of voters display centres.