Upcoming LG polls: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to use biometric system in one tehsil as pilot project

The Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has decided to limit the use of biometric technology for the upcoming local government elections to one Tehsil as a pilot project instead of using the technology across the province.
An official of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said local government elections would be delayed by another five to six months if the party kept insisting that the votes to be polled through biometric machines. The official maintained that the KP government was informed by the ECP that they could hold the local bodies elections before June 30, if they were willing to forego their insistence on biometric verification and to procure the technology necessary for biometric verification, they would need at least another 20 weeks.
In a letter sent to the ECP, the provincial KP government informed the ECP that it was ready to wait for another few months to hold LG polls. However, it requested that biometric verification of voters be assured in Ghazi Tehsil of Haripur district as a pilot project. "The KP government is making necessary amendments to add 'biometric verification polls' in the rules and the Local Governments Act," the official said.
The ECP would have needed the same amount of time to procure machines needed for biometric verification in both cases - single Tehsil and the entire province, the official maintained. The authorities will have to float international tenders since no company in Pakistan manufactures the devices needed for biometric verification. Under Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules, once tenders are advertised, companies are given 15 days to submit their bids. Around a week is required for analysis and deciding a successful bidder. Once a contract is signed, the bidder would take at least two months to get these machines delivered.
An estimated 50,000 machines would be needed if KP authorities opt for the use of biometric technology across the province. With each machine costing around Rs 30,000, approximately Rs 1.5 billion would be needed for the exercise. Although only between 500 and 1,000 machines are required now since biometric verification of voters will be confined to Ghazi Tehsil, procuring them would still take as much time as procuring 50,000 machines.
The provincial office of the ECP and the KP government held a mock election exercise with biometric system in four union councils of Peshawar on December 28, 2013. Some flaws were detected during the exercise and a committee of experts was formed to look into these technical issues.