Karachi loses over 0.5 million voters in door-to-door verification drive

The Election Commission's exercise of door-to-door verification of draft electoral rolls (DERs) has revealed a reduction of 5,17,287 eligible voters as compared to the number showed in a report prepared after a similar exercise conducted by Nadra in August 2011, Business Recorder has learnt.
As per the summary of verification of the rolls carried out by the officials of the office of Provincial Election Commissioner Sindh, the Karachi division has lost 5,17,287 eligible voters. Summary available with Business Recorder mentioned that only Karachi Central's number of voters has been increased in door-to-door verification of draft electoral rolls (DERs) and 55,142 voters have been added in the new list.
While, 5,17,287 voters have been decreased in other districts of Karachi division including Karachi West, Karachi South, Karachi East and Malir. Details revealed that Karachi West lost 1,00,324 voters, Karachi South lost 39,136 voters, Karachi East lost 4,24,399 voters and Malir district has lost 8,570 voters during door-to-door verification of DERs.
Report disclosed that there are nine districts of Sindh in which number of voters have been increased including Benazir Bhuttoabad (61619), Kashmore-Kandhkot (3,8,070) Umerkot (19,217), Naushehro Feroze (18543), Badin (13205), Jamshoro (7,970) Mirpurkhas (4,226) and Hyderabad (4,776).
In this connection, an official in the office of PEC told Business Recorder that they had sent a list of the preliminary electoral rolls to Nadra for verification. He said votes might have been deleted on the basis of invalid CNICs and after verification of physical presence of voters in their areas, who might have shifted to other areas. About addition of voters, the official said entries of electoral rolls were made in the year 2007, and now definitely, the number of eligible voters had been increased.