Nadra provides Final Electoral Rolls of Cantonment areas in record time

Islamabad: The National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) has delivered Final Electoral Rolls to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to be used for conduct of Local government elections in Cantonment areas across the country, Nadra sources said Thursday.
Nadra had been given very strict timelines by the Supreme Court of Pakistan for this task, which some of the leading experts of the country considered difficult to meet, the sources maintained.
NADRA was already working overtime to resolve CNIC backlogs and verification of votes from different constituencies. However by using its Citizens’ database and dedicating teams to work on this project, NADRA has completed the task assigned to it for provisioning of updated Electoral Rolls for Local bodies elections in cantonment areas country wide.
A spokesman of the Nadra when contacted said it happened for the first time in the history of local bodies elections Nadra has included pictures of each and every voter, living in cantonment areas of the country, on all computerized local body electorals rolls. This step was taken in light of demand raised by a number of political parties and civil society organizations regarding various discrepancies in electoral rolls due to fake, multiple or duplicate entries in previous local bodies voters’ lists.
In Pakistan, for many years, electoral rolls of cantonment areas of the country were prepared only through door-to-door enumeration and there was absence of any authentic data to back the process up.
The new management of Nadra took this daunting task as challenge and service to the people of Pakistan. To meet the deadlines, Chairman NADRA directed the staff to work 24/7 and use its entire available resources for completion of task within stipulated time, he added.
The spokesman said that during this period, 84,442 fresh CNICs were provided by NADRA to ECP for registration as voter. After public display process carried out by ECP, NADRA made its data acquisition resources available for digitization of Section - 18 entries, he stated.
Meanwhile, stating the statistics of the voters, the spokesman added that there are 1,010,245 male and 862,494 female voters (total: 1,872,739 voters) in Final Electoral Rolls for cantonment areas which belongs to 29 districts of country. He said that timely provision of Final Electoral Rolls has made it possible to receive nomination papers in compliance of orders of the Supreme Court which has started from 2nd April 2015.