ECP reviews preparations for 2023 general election

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan Tuesday reviewed its preparations for the 2023 general election, including the Election Management System (EMS) and online scrutiny of candidates. In this connection, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja presided over a meeting here at the commission secretariat, which was attended by the members of Election Commission, special secretary, additional secretary and senior officials of the Election Commission.

The forum was given briefings on various IT projects by a team of the Election Commission and officials of the Project Management Unit on the General Election 2023. These projects also include Election Management System (EMS), which will facilitate returning officers in compilation of the results.

These results will be shown to the media and candidates through live screens in the offices of returning officers, offices of provincial election commissioners and election commission secretariat. Apart from this, the Election Commission was also briefed on the establishment of election management control center. The purpose of the center is to monitor all election phases before polling, polling day and after polling.

In the briefing, the commission was also apprised of the Scrutiny Facilitation Center (SFC) set up to facilitate the Returning Officers during scrutiny and was informed that under this system, an online system was created in collaboration with various departments such as the State Bank, FIA, NAB, NADRA and FBR through which various information and other data and data related to candidates were created from these departments.

Under this system, information about the candidate’s dual citizenship, bank default, FBR and NAB cases is immediately provided to the returning officers. This information helps the Returning Officers in scrutiny, so that they can decide the nomination papers in a timely manner as per the law. Under this system, records of 8,595 candidates were provided to the Returning Officers after verification from these institutions. Apart from this, the commission was also briefed on the monitoring system used in the general elections and it was informed that a control room would be set up for timely monitoring of all the election process in the election.