Aurat Foundation and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Commission on the status of women have demanded of the Election Commission of Pakistan to upload Form-45 in order to conduct polling station wise analysis. Speaking a joint press conference at Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, the foundation's resident director Ms Shabina Ayaz and the KPCSW chairperson Neelum Toru appreciated the Election Commission of Pakistan for conducting smooth and successful elections.
Ms Toru while explaining the role of the KPCSW said that the commission facilitated Aurat Foundation through provision of lists of district committees on the status of women (DCSWs), ensuring participation of women in the activities i e capacity building workshops, seminars and media conferences, dissemination of essential material at provincial and district levels. The district committees, she said, properly monitored pre-election and polling day and shared findings with the KPCSW.
The KPCSW chief demanded of the ECP to disclose as to what disciplinary action had been taken by it on non-compliance of provision reallocating minimum of 5 percent general seats tickets to women. She also questioned at to what action had been taken by the ECP where female voters'0 turnout was below 10 percent.
"We demand of the parliament to view the election act and remove the ambiguities in election process especially with regards to the section 9 (1) and section 206. We also want to know the criteria for nomination on the reserved seats by the political parties," she said.
Commenting on the election results, she said that the political parties had just fulfilled the formalities by awarding tickets to the female candidates in the areas where they had little chances of success and thus most of the women candidates had bagged nominal votes.
She also talked about the problems faced by female voters in the areas where separate polling booths were not set up for them. Sharing further information, she said that of the 17 female national assembly candidates only Pakistan People's Party's Ms Asma Alamgir (NA-27-Peshawar) had bagged highest number of 24002 votes while the lowest number of votes 183 were secured by Awami National Party's Iffat Kulsoom from NA-13.
Similarly, in the provincial assembly constituencies highest voters (10904) were secured by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf candidates Hamida Shahid from PK-10 Dir upper, Saira Khalid of PTI bagged 10377 votes from PK-42 and the lowest were 19 votes secured by Qaumi Watan Party candidate Nargis Samin.
The total votes secured by the women in NA constituencies, she said, were 51,909 and in the provincial assembly constituencies were 42,769 votes which meant that 0.25 million votes of women were missing in the NA seats and 2.8 million were missing in the provincial assembly constituencies in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Shabina Ayaz urged the ECP to probe into the matter as to why the women votes were decreased in the July 25, 2018 elections. She said the monitoring bodies of Aurat Foundation had got no written agreements about women votes but still there were some polling stations where the women votes were not polled or recorded next to nil.
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