ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: The preliminary electoral rolls will be put on display at around 55,000 centres across the country on Wednesday (today) to enable the voters to verify the entries.

The display of electoral rolls will coincide with launch of a massive short message service (SMS) for around 85 million voters.

Under this service, the eligible voters will be able to send computerised national identity card (CNIC) numbers to ‘8300’ and in response get the voting details, including name of the electoral areas, block codes, and tehsil and district serial numbers. In order to protect the privacy of a voter and curb the misuse of the facility, the name, parentage and home address of a voter will not be shown in SMS.

Through the hi-tech technology, the voter would get information about his/her vote within seconds. This service would minimise the possibility of errors in the final electoral rolls.

Apart from the display centres, the service could be considered a virtual display centre where the voter sitting anywhere in the country would be able to check details of his/her vote.

An official of the Election Commission told Dawn that under the law it was mandatory to put up the draft electoral rolls for display for a minimum period of 21 days.

Asked when the final electoral rolls would be ready, he said that though it largely depended on the number of complaints, the target was to complete the exercise by the end of May.

He said after the development of error-free electoral rolls, the commission in collaboration with the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) would keep on updating them on regular basis.

Answering a question, he said, the missed out eligible voters would be able to get them enlisted on the electoral rolls before the announcement of the schedule of general elections.

Likewise, if someone’s vote is registered at his permanent address and the person wants to cast the vote at the temporary address, it would be possible to get the address changed in the electoral rolls.

The official said the details about the location of display centres for each and every district and area had also been posted at the Election Commission’s website.