National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) has completed printing of Draft Electoral Rolls (DERs) of all 130 districts containing the data of 80.6 million eligible voters under the supervision of Election commission of Pakistan. "The gigantic task of printing DERs of more than 80 million eligible voters under close supervision of ECP has been completed by Nadra, which helps bring transparency in election process," said Tariq Malik, Deputy Chairman Nadra here on Thursday.
Nadra has printed the DERs of all the districts and has transported the lists to district elections offices, who will now display the lists to get feedback from general public, Tariq Malik said, adding that the DERs now consist of 80.6 million eligible voters with valid CNICs.
Nadra verified the Final Electoral Rolls (FERs) 2008 on its database and found that entries of 44 million voters with CNICs out of 81 million were correct, while about 37 million had no match on Nadra database and they were unverified voters without identity cards, Malik said, adding that 36 million new voters who got registered after 2008 general elections with valid CNICs were added in the DERs.
The augmentation done under the business rules approved by ECP consists of eligible voters who got the CNICs since inception of Nadra till the preparation of DERs in 2011 and enabling them to exercise their adult franchise, Deputy Chairman Nadra said. He said that the CNIC has been made mandatory for registration and for casting a vote by legislation approved by the Parliament and hence civil registry is used to prepare draft electoral rolls.
"Nadra has registered 93 per cent of adult population of Pakistan by issuing over 86 million CNICs and has an ambitious plan to register the rest of the population in next six months," Nadra Deputy Chief said. It is to mention here that the ECP will conduct door to door enumeration and registration campaign from august 22, in which more than 200,000 teachers will take part and fill forms.
The manual collection of information usually marred by mistakes translate into updated electoral rolls, however, this time, with the help of Nadra, ECP will verify eligible voters information already printed in forms, thus reducing the error margin significantly.
"Printing of Draft Electoral Rolls of 130 districts was possible only after extensive analysis of Final Electoral Rolls of 2008 (FER-2008) in close collaboration with ECP", Tariq malik said, adding that after application of 139,861 census block codes as an aftermath of door to door housing census conducted by Pakistan Census Organisation.
Malik urged people to register for vote and verify if they already registered by helping ECP staff knocking their doors during the door-to-door campaign to be initiated from August 22. "This is truly an equal opportunity for all citizens including women, eunuchs, minorities, poor, rich, young and senior citizens," he added. He said that Nadra's 800 data acquisition units, including 220 mobile registration vans and offices country-wide had been directed to work with District Election Officers to help people without CNICs, so that they can apply to get one during ECPs door to door verification exercise. "Nadra intends to utilise this opportunity to reach out unregistered population and explain them that by not having a CNIC will disenfranchise them," he said.