ISLAMABAD, Aug 4: As they account for 47 per cent of the 84.3 million entries on the electoral rolls, the country’s youths are set to play a decisive role in the next general election. According to the age details of the enrolled voters released by the Election Commission, 40 million voters are aged between 18 and 35. Of them, 16.2 million are between 18 and 25 years, including 1.58 million voters who attained the age of 18 between Jan 1 and May 31 this year.

Just over 23 million of the voters come in the age bracket of 26 to 35. Another 17 million voters are in the 36-45 age group, 11.9 million are between 46 and 55 years, 8.4 million are aged 56 to 65 years and 6.7 million are older than 65 years.

However, the percentage of the youth is bound to significantly change if a claim recently made by PPP Senator Sughra Imam that 15 million dead people have been enrolled as voters is true.

Talking to this correspondent, National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) chairman Mohammad Tariq Malik did not rule out the possibility and said there was no technology to detect registration of the dead as voters.

He said 1.58 million entries of dead people in the electoral rolls had been detected in the United States and 11.8 million such entries had been found in India while updating the rolls.

He said it was basically the responsibility of people to report deaths and births in their families. He pointed out that people reported deaths in their families only when they needed to do it for the purpose of succession to property.

He said if Senator Imam had some information about the matter, she should share it with the Election Commission.

The Nadra chief said although the final electoral rolls had been unveiled, anomalies could be removed till the announcement of the election schedule.

He revealed that there was a gap of 7.64 million in the number of registered voters and holders of computerised national identity cards. Nadra has issued 92 million CNICs while the number of registered voters is 84.36 million.

Mr Malik said those who held CNICs but were not registered as voters were either deceased, had surrendered their nationality, were overseas Pakistanis or dual nationals without any proof of residence in any electoral area of Pakistan, their entries had been blocked in the Nadra database due to doubtful nationality or multiple entries, or their CNICs had been issued after June 1 this year.