RAWALPINDI, Feb 18: Most of the voters in this sister city of Islamabad complained about discrepancy in voters’ list and the difficulties they faced in locating their polling stations.

As the voters’ turnout was relatively low in NA-55 and NA 56 in Rawalpindi in the morning, this correspondent saw a number of voters moving from one polling station to another to cast their votes.

The problem was aggravated when some traditional polling stations were relocated. For example, the polling station for the residents of B-Block was shifted from Community Centre near Madni Masjid to Muslim Higher Secondary School No 2.

The polling staff was equally disturbed when the people registered at different polling stations mistakenly came to them in search of their name in the voters’ list. The staff had to go through entire lists only to find that the voter’s name was not in the list. They conceded that the electoral rolls had not been prepared in an orderly manner and without any sequence of residential addresses.

Some members of the polling staff were seen visiting the camps of political parties to request them to give accurate registration numbers so that the polling process could be streamlined. This bore results.

Interestingly, about 125 voters were registered at one address Jamia Rizvia Ziaul Uloom, Satellite Town for UC-19, Government Boys Degree College Satellite Town, although most of them were residents of Azad Kashmir, Abbottabad or Karachi for that matter. The presiding officer when approached said he could not deny voting right to anybody whose name was in the list provided by the Election Commission of Pakistan in the interest of smooth polling.

He conceded that a voter could not be registered on addresses of any educational institute, shop or business enterprise and added that some polling agents had objected to their vote. He said he would keep a separate envelope for such votes. This correspondent, however, saw even such voters casting their votes in the same ballot box.

At the same station, when this correspondent drew the attention of an assistant presiding officer (APO) over voting on photocopies of NICs, he asked polling agents if they had any objection on photocopies. A polling agent had objection and the APO said he would declare the vote as “tender” although the vote had already been cast. An examination of NICs of three voters revealed their permanent addresses in Azad Kashmir and Abbotabad, temporary address in Karachi while their votes were listed in the name of Jamia Rizvia. None of the other Madressahs in the area had any votes in the list.

At a woman polling station, tens of voters’ names were found without NIC numbers and some without even addresses while many more contained Satellite Town as their address but without any house number or street number.