37.5 million bogus voters: Supreme Court tells Nadra and ECP to submit comments

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to submit in 10 days para-wise comments on 37.5 million bogus voters in the electoral roll.
The apex court issued notice to Attorney-General Molvi Anwar-ul-Haq to furnish constitutional provisions along with their interpretations in case of bogus votes. A two-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry with Justice Ghulam Rabbani was hearing a petition filed by a TV journalist against 37.5 million fake names included in the electoral rolls of various constituencies.
Under the 18th Amendment, the power of election commissioner has been delegated to the ECP, which comprises treasury and opposition members of parliament, therefore the court also asked the counsel to look into the composition of top electoral body.
The lawyer for the petitioner said that the figures of Nadra and the Election Commission of Pakistan must be the same. All citizens eligible to vote are registered with Nadra with relevant details, he added.
He pleaded that the court direct the ECP to delete those names who are not registered with Nadra. If a representative, he contended, is elected through a non-transparent process, the right of people to elect their representatives will be negated.
"Due diligence in maintaining electoral rolls is complete negation of people's rights and tantamounts to failure of democracy," he added.
He said if the bogus and fictitious names allowed to be retained on the electoral rolls, this amounts to negation of the fundamental rights of every citizen. Any member of the national or provincial assemblies who is elected from a particular constituency where fictitious and bogus names are included could not be declared true representative of the people.
The ECP had declared some 37.2 million voters who were registered in 2007 lists and exercised their right to vote in 2008 general elections as fake thus creating doubts over the genuineness of the results.