NA Electoral Reforms body seeks details of expenditure on purchase of EVMs

ISLAMABAD: The sub-committee of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms on Wednesday sought details of expenditure incurred on the purchase of 300,000 Electronic Voting Machines from the Election Commission of Pakistan.

The meeting of the sub-committee was held on Wednesday with its Chairman Zahid Hamid, Minister for Climate Change in the chair.The Election Commission of Pakistan had informed the committee that in first phase it would issue tender for the purchase of 400 Electronic Voting Machines by next week.

It is to be mentioned here that the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms had given its nod in the sub-committee on the viability of the voting through bio-metric system with using off-line system. Nadra has already given a proposal of devising a hardware security system under off-line mechanism of bio-metric system.

Under the off-line mechanism, the data of voters will be available at the polling stations and the officials of the Ministry of Information Technology will examine the hardware security system and will also review cost of the hardware security system and its date of completion.

Talking to newsmen after the meeting, chairman sub-committee of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms Zahid Hamid told them that all details for the usage of bio-metric system for voters verification have been finalised.

He said usage of bio-metric system for the verification of voters and voting through electronic Voting Machines is possible in any bye-elections after the month of September.Zahid Hamid said the committee has recommended the Election Commission of Pakistan not to provide voter list of females with their pictures to the candidates while the decision on provision of voters list of male voters to the candidates defer till next meeting.

In a reply to a question regarding the voting rights to Overseas Pakistanis, Chairman Sub-committee of the Parliamentary Committee  Zahid Hamid said the report of international experts with regard to voting rights and procedure to overseas Pakistanis will be received by one week and then it would be presented to the main committee of Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms for taking a final decision.

Meanwhile according to sources, the draft of the “Unified Election Act” and the “Unified Election Rules” was in the final stages of preparation in consultation with the members of different political parties. The final draft will be presented to the main committee within the next 2-3 weeks.

The committee was also informed that the new rules propose to announce the ‘Action Plan of the Elections’ six months prior to the date of elections so that the process is complete before the caretaker government assumes office.

The recommendations also give out the procedure of the immediate declaration of the election results and the method of filing and disposing off election petitions and the issues related to filling of form no 14.

The new recommendations will also lay down the procedure to conduct the Local Government and Senate elections.The recommendations from the members of Senate regarding the Senate Elections are complete and will soon be sent to the sub-committee to be incorporated in the final draft.