IHC to hear PTI’s plea seeking en masse access to EC data server

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has submitted a petition to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking its direction to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to give it en masse access to the 8,300 server data as it was trying to formulate credible voter lists throughout the country for the intra-party elections.
PTI’s Chief Election Commissioner Tasneem Noorani filed the petition citing the ECP as respondent.
A division bench, comprising Justice Noorul Haq N Qureshi and Justice Aamer Farooq, will hear the petition on Tuesday (today).
Noorani, through his counsel Furrukh Dall advocate, contended before the IHC that the PTI Election Commission had decided to register members through their cell phones on the basis of “one phone one vote”, by asking them to submit their names and CNIC numbers.
The data will be received through the new telephone short code (9008) allotted to the PTI by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The main server will lock the name with a CNIC number of the member. In order to geographically place its members, the PTI needs to get their particulars, including the census code, from the existing available service of ECP through 8300.
The petitioner said they were facing problem in getting the data of each member one by one from 8300 which was very cumbersome and also time consuming, as the SMS modems had speed limitation and so the 8300 service. The petitioner requested the ECP to allow access to the 8300 service en masse, rather than individually.