Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto has said discrepancy between electoral lists of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and Nadra are evidence of rigging in the forthcoming local government elections.
In a statement on Sunday, she said in many villages across the country, where hundreds lived, only four or five had identity cards without which one could not vote, adding, "local government elections are a farce when identity cards are restricted".
"According to the ECP, there were a total of 62,600,000 voters as of May 31, 2005.
Nadra statistics show a total of 70,194,070 voters as on August 30, 2002," the release pointed out, adding difference amongst the two lists amounts to 7,594,070 voters.
"As the ECP electoral lists are to be used, it means several million voters have disappeared if one takes the figures of 2002," Benazir Bhutto said.
"In fact the numbers should have increased with the population. It is this difference where the PPP suspects the ghost voters are to be brought into play."
Benazir Bhutto said fresh electoral rolls through an independent body were essential to the holding of fair elections. She noted that although Nadra had more persons enrolled than the ECP, "nonetheless, Nadra enrolment had left out hundreds of thousands of citizens".
She said in constituencies where there was population of hundreds, five to ten had identity cards, which amounted to a massive disenfranchisement of the people of the country for political purposes.
She called upon the election commission to permit multiple identity proofs, as hundreds of thousands of people would be disenfranchised if required to vote using only single identity.
"Passports, licenses, etc, were also valid identity papers," she said.