Parties struggling to recruit polling agents

LAHORE: With just 48 hours to go before the election day, virtually all the political parties in Lahore are still scampering to recruit polling agents that are supposedly any party’s watchdog against rigging.

Polling agents have a key role to play on the election day, as they are the ones who identify the voters from the voters’ list and ensure that no fraudulent vote is cast. The polling agents also monitor the counting process and ensure that there was no error, intentional or unintentional in the counting process, after which they record the final decision at every polling station in their presence and certify (or not) the authenticity of the results as independent observers.

These individuals need to sign different forms that ensure election transparency. These include form 42 to certify that the ballot box was empty at the start of the polling day, form 43 to mark the list of tendered votes, form 44 to mark the list of challenged votes, form 45 which represents the final count of the votes for each party and form 46 that marks the total ballot papers used.

These might not be rocket science but they surely involve technicalities over which individuals need to be trained upon. Especially in the case of tendered votes, challenged votes, making a note of the box seal numbers and the ballot paper counts.

However, a survey conducted by ‘The News’ with just two days to go, both the PTI and the PML-N are short of polling agents and are still in the process of recruitment.

This means that those recruited would have little training and understanding of the job they are going to perform. There are 14 National Assembly constituencies in Lahore, each one of which has an average of 275-300 polling stations.

Each polling station has multiple polling booths. The average number of polling agents for a constituency required by a party is 600 to 700.

According to sources within both the PTI and the PML-N in addition to preoccupation with campaigning, competence, reliability and financial remuneration demanded are the key factors causing this crisis.

Election Commission of Pakistan spokesperson while commenting on the issue said the Commission had provided all the training material required in the form of booklets to all the political parties for recruiting and training their polling agents. However, it is not the responsibility of the Election Commission to train these individuals.

When contacted, the spokespersons of both the PML-N and the PTI denied that they were struggling with recruiting polling agents and said heir parties were well on schedule with their election day preparations.