Official sources in Peshawar said the Election Commission had appreciated the provincial government’s proposals and decided to use KP as a model for other provinces by experimenting with the use of biometrics in the polling for local government election. A biometric machine made by NADRA would be put to use in KP for the purpose.
The sources said arrangements are being made by the Election Commission of Pakistan and the Peshawar district administration to hold mock polling in two urban and two rural polling stations to test the biometric machines on December 26. It would be the first time that biometrics would be use for polling purposes in the country.
Efforts would be made to motivate voters in urban and rural union councils to cast their votes using the electronic machines. It has been estimated that 50,000 biometric machines would be required for the polling in KP during the local government polls. KP would be the last province to hold the local government election, which have already been held in Balochistan and are now underway in Punjab. The machines, with a life-span of around 25 years, would reportedly cost more than Rs1 billion.
The PTI-led coalition government, which also includes the Jamaar-i-Islami and the smaller Swabi-based Awami Jamhoori Ittehad Pakistan, is also said to be keen to let the judicial officers conduct the local government election in the province. It has proposed to the Election Commission that judicial officers be made available to supervise the local government polls in place of the provincial government officials. This proposal too is expected to be experimented in the coming local bodies’ election.
It was learnt that KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had expressed the wish to meet the Chief Election Commission Justice Nasirul Mulk and attend the commission’s meeting to explain and push for the adoption of the two proposals made by the PTI-headed provincial government. However, the Chief Election Commissioner agreed to hold the mock polling using the biometric machines developed by NADRA when Chief Secretary Mohammad Shahzad Arbab presented these proposals at the recent meeting of the Election Commission in Islamabad.
Both proposals were seen as unusual as provincial governments normally devise a system to win the local government election. But in case of the PTI-led coalition government, its two proposals using the biometric machines and deploying judicial officers for supervision of the polls could harm its interest as the polling would be more transparent and the outcome could go against it.
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Quelle/Source: The News International, 24.12.2013
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