Free and fair elections: NADRA to ensure ‘one card, one vote, one poll’

[Veer]

ISLAMABAD:
For electoral reforms, the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) would ensure a mechanism of “one CNIC, one vote, one poll” by the 2011 Census, said Deputy Chairman NADRA Tariq Malik during a presentation organized by the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) on Thursday.
The previous census was conducted in 1998; however many anomalies have still not been rectified, according to Malik.
“With an increasing population, electoral lists have been expanding,” he said adding that his department is working to introduce a new strategy in which every new CNIC holder’s registration will be communicated to the Election Commission of Pakistan.
Preliminary Electoral Rolls would be published after the cut-off registration date; the status of votes could be checked through an SMS service on a dedicated NADRA number, he said. The registration officer will then verify the votes.
To bring electoral reforms, communication between NADRA and the ECP is obligatory, Malik said. He added that the major change to incorporate is to ensure each citizen is issued only one Computerised National Identification Card (CNIC), stating that there have been instances where one person had 20 CNICs.
He said that the biometric database system introduced in 2005 is the hallmark of NADRA, adding that over the last three years the organisation has enhanced the fingerprint and facial galleries through a biometric data collection system.
Moreover, he said that NADRA has initiated a number of verification methods to ensure that no fake registrations are made during ECP’s door-to-door enumeration campaign.
“Before we took up the assignment, only 55% of the population was registered. But now the percentage of registered citizens stands at 95%,” Tariq said.
Giving the province-wise breakdown of the registration, he said they have registered 98% of the people in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 82% of the people in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, 92% of Punjab, 85% of Sindh, 73% of Balochistan, and 99% of Islamabad and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. “In Sindh and Balochistan the ratio of women registration has increased to 78% as compared to the previous ratio of 28%,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 28th, 2011.