MORE THAN HALF OF WORK DONE FOR COMPUTERIZED ELECTORAL ROLLS AND ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE (EVM)
Islamabad the 23rd April, 2011.- The Hon’ble Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan, Mr. Justice (R) Hamid Ali Mirza has said that the passage of Electoral Reforms Bill by the Parliament on 18th April 2011, is another historical step forward to provide legal cover for preparation of computerized Electoral Rolls in collaboration with NADRA. The Hon’ble Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan has, therefore, thanked all the Parliamentarians, Political Parties, Civil Society and the Media who have fully supported the Election Commission of Pakistan in its efforts to achieve this objective. As introduction of new system requires meticulous planning and timely execution the ECP has thus been deliberating and taking necessary decisions in consultation with all stakeholders over the past more than a year to reach at this stage, CEC observed.
2- Elaborating further, the Secretary, ECP Mr. Ishtiak Ahmed Khan mentioned some of the milestones of this roadmap as under:
i- In the electoral council’s meeting held in 2010 it was decided to use the Computerized National Identity Cards (CNIC) as Unique Identifier without which it was not possible to prepare Computerized Electoral Rolls (CERS).
ii- As this required amendments in the law, a draft bill making CNIC mandatory was sent by the ECP on 29-12-2010 to Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs which has now (on 18th April, 2011) been passed by the Parliament.
iii- Political parties supported the proposal in consultative meetings held with them on 30-3-2010 and 22-2-2011.
iv- Likewise, Civil Society recommended the proposals in the meeting held on 29-3-2010.
v- In order to determine the feasibility of the proposal in real time environment, a pilot project for preparation of computerized Electoral Rolls was started and completed in four districts, one in each province, in 2010.
vi- In a judgment announced on 31-3-2011, the Hon’ble CEC also received blessings and approval of Hon’ble Supreme Court of Pakistan to complete the project “as soon as could be possible”.
vii- Now, in April 2011, information about house-hold numbers and the CNIC of head of the house-hold has been collected through the enumerators and supervisors engaged by the Population Census organization.
viii- The ECP database pertaining to Electoral Rolls-2007 was provided to NADRA on 18th February 2011 which after verification and augmentation was released on 8th March 2011.
ix- Instructions have been issued to all Provincial Election Commissioners to complete all the arrangements for door-to-door verification of preliminary Electoral Rolls in July 2011.
x- The ECP will complete this task in December 2011 and the final lists will be given to NADRA for printing so that the same could be used for any future elections.
4- The ECP is also working on the adoption of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for use during upcoming elections. In this regard a high level delegation visited Brussels in July, 2010 to attend International Conference on EVM to learn the experiences of other countries. EVM feasibility study was conducted and the Election Commission arranged two EVM demonstrations on 28th-29th June, 2010 and third one on 23rd February, 2011 and invited the representative of major political parties for seeking their recommendations and taking them on board. The international and national vendors, manufacturers, suppliers demonstrated their EVM’s. Presently the EVM Committee of the ECP is working on Pilot Project Activities to test EVMs in real environment. The ECP is also sending a draft bill to the Parliament for necessary legislation so that necessary amendment could be made in the Representation of the People Act, 1976 and the Rules framed there under.
5- The Secretary, ECP has also made it clear that the ECP is halfway through with these initiatives and the ECP now just needs time and necessary resources for completion of the remaining stages by the end of 2011.
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