Flaws in electoral lists confusing candidates and voters

Karachi
The voters for the local government polls in 15 districts of Sindh scheduled to be conducted on November 19 are in a quandary because of the irregularities being exposed in electoral lists as they are unable to locate their vote and polling stations.
These discrepancies surfaced when the Election Commission of Pakistan adopted the delimitation of the area to prepare computerised lists that did not match with NADRA records.
These lists were arranged under the 1998 census and NADRA finalised its list using the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics for population census in 2012.
An ECP official, on the condition of anonymity, held NADRA responsible for the incomplete voter lists that lacked details including addresses, when he was shown such entries running in hundreds in just one union council of Lyari.
Admitting the mistake, he said such errors would also be found in other union councils too, as NADRA officials only asked the national identity card of one member of the family to gather the data of other members.
The other problem is that NADRA only gives a shortened address and did not mention the locality. The candidates too faced the same situation moving from pillar to post to find out the actual address and name of the voters.
This will also result in the bogus votes as the data would not be able to verify the actual voters.
The officer said the difficulty did not end here as the polling scheme were also flawed with many polling stations being set up outside the wards which was a clear-cut violation of the rules issued by the ECP.
The details of wards were also not given to the local government department which would create problem in establishing polling stations in the absence of boundaries, the department officer said.
The second phase of elections in Sindh’s 15 districts will be held on November 19, and number of female and male voters is 3,681,686 and 4,323,514 respectively.