ISLAMABAD, Oct 17: About 33,000 people, including Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, have checked their particulars on the voters list through SMS on the National Voters Day observed in the country on Wednesday.

This brings the total number of the voters who have so far used the Nadra service to 9.258 million. The service was launched in February this year.

Using the service, voters in any part of the country can check details about the status of their vote within seconds by just sending an SMS from their mobile phones. The SMS service has been launched in cooperation with all mobile phone companies in Pakistan.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) declared October 17 as National Voter’s Day to mobilise voters to register themselves and exercise their right to vote.

The figures show that 2.8 million subscribers of Telenor have verified the status of their vote through SMS, followed by 2.72 million of Mobilink, 1.92 million of Ufone, 0.906 million of Zong and 0.853 million of Warid.

But, compared to the huge number of voters, over 9 million have so far used the facility. “This is a very small percentage of the total number of eligible voters,” a Nadra official said.

Still the authority have approached the Guinness World Records for recognition of a record of such a large number of people using SMS service to check vote-related details.

“We are confident to make the record as there is no other country which uses the facility on such a large scale”, the official claimed.

According to him, the chief justice used the service to find out his polling station in Quetta. A couple of days earlier, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf had used the service. He is registered as a voter in Gujar Khan (NA-51 Rawalpindi).

According to the figures, more than 23,000 people checked the status of their vote through the service on October 16. “We are working to expand the verification process,” the official claimed.