RAWALPINDI:The final electoral rolls prepared by the Election Commission (Rawalpindi Chapter) will be displayed on Friday (today) in view of coming local government elections and the next general elections.

“During the campaign, the teams verified 3,454,461 voters against the population of 5,400,898. For the purpose, the election commission appointed 52 assistant registration officers, 585 supervisors and 1882 verifying officials,” said District Election Commissioner Roy Sultan Bhatty.

He said that teams went door-to-door to verify voters so they could be enrolled according to their permanent or temporary address on their Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs).

Teams will delete the names of those who have passed away and enroll new voters, he said, adding that One Window Centres had been established in all district election commission offices where people would be able to correct their names in the list.

He said that people would also check their votes in the electoral rolls through SMS on 8300 while submitting their CNICs, adding that form submission centres would also be activated from Friday to collect objections of voters. He said that the people would be facilitated at all costs.

“The voters will be provided form No 13 certified by the election commission if the address of the voters changed and it will be entered in the constituency as per the CNIC address while form 14 will be given to government employees,” he said, adding that District Election Commission Rawalpindi’s campaign to reviewelectoralrolls will continue. He said that the election commission also provided a link on its website to guide people on how to register themselves.

Mr Bhatty said that under the law, the provincial government was bound to facilitate the election commission to complete the constitutional obligation to make error-free voter lists for elections.

He said that the district election commission would consult head offices to solve the problems of transgender persons so they could be registered inelectoralrolls.

He said that if any person had an objection over the inclusion of the name of any other person, then he or she will submit the application through Form-16 of the election commission to remove the name of the person who is not resident of the area.

For the correction of address as per CNIC, he said that the voter would submit the application through form-17 available at the display centre. He said that the election commission would register the votes as per the address mentioned on identity cards.

The election commission has completed the election-related process and is ready to held new LG elections.

According to the new law, union councils have been abolished and the system of Neighbourhood Councils (NCs) and Village Councils (VCs) has been introduced. There will be NCs in urban areas and VCs in rural areas which will be formed on an average population of 20,000 as per Census 2017 - minimum population with a margin of 10percent increase in population.

However, there is no plan of the government about the next local government in the coming days and the bureaucracy will run the affairs of the civic bodies.

In 2015, the local government elections were held on the basis of political parties for the first time in the history of the country. PML-N appeared to be the single largest party in the RMC and District Council.

After completing thetenureoflocalgovernmentin the province on Jan 1, 2022, former Punjab chief ministerSardarUsman Buzdar issued a notification to appoint deputy commissioners in placeofelected mayor and district council chairmen across the province.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2022