Cause of concern: voter lists replete with errors

CHITRAL, March 25: Thousands of people in the district of Chitral have found their names missing in the preliminary voter lists prepared and displayed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). The voters, some of them living out of the valley, told chitraltoday.net that they inquired about their names in the list through the SMS service of the ECP and found their names missing or located out of their constituencies. In many cases the voter names have been included in other constituencies. Besides, the names of many villages have been mentioned wrongly or the block area names have deliberately changed by the numerators, which would cause problems for the voters. The residents said that they had to travel to the camp offices of the ECP from far-off villages to correct the mistakes. They demanded that the government should extend the date for correction of the anomalies and also send special teams to distant villages to include the names of those missing from the list. They also demanded that action should be taken against those officials who changed the names of the electoral blocks or villages. An election commission official said that request received from the electorates about correction in the list would be forwarded to the National Database and registration Authority (NADRA) for entry into the system.]]>