ECP designs RMS for ensuring transparency in eletoral process
ISLAMABAD, Dec 28 (APP):The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has designed a reliable Result Management System
(RMS) to further improve accuracy, efficiency and transparency of the results tabulation process
in upcoming General Election 2018.
The RMS has capacity to store all the scan pages of Forms-XIV, XVI & XVII along with data,
stored into the database, permanently for Audit trail accountability purposes.
Listing the steps being taken to improve overall working of the Commission, official sources
on Thursday said Data Bank of officers and officials has already been prepared for onward
appointment as Presiding Officers, Assistant Presiding Officers and Polling Officers to facilitate
their training well before elections.
Independent Monitoring Wing has been established in the ECP to oversee pre-poll, post-poll
activities and point out illegal practices, including huge spending on electoral exercises in violation
of Law.
The sources said that interaction with Political Parties and Civil Society organizations were
held for preparation and finalization of existing Code of Conduct to get their feedback/suggestions
for making improvement in election process.
They said as many as 130 District Voters Education Committees are being formed to
motivate general public, especially women and specifically rural women, persons with
disabilities, transgender and other marginalized groups with help of civil society organizations,
notables of area and relevant departments in each district to take part in electoral activities
including registration of votes.
Thirty more warehouses are being established across the country at each divisional level to
safeguard election material.
Election Commission of Pakistan has successfully conducted GIS survey of all polling stations
upto 71,000 across the country. Now-a-days extension work is under progress of adding additional
polling stations for preparation of General Elections, 2018.
An exclusive gender wing has been established in the ECP to encourage inclusion of female
staff at ECP, develop strategies and implementation plans for reducing gender disparity, conduct
research to identify barriers for women and marginalized sections of society from participation in
electoral process and develop a mechanism to electoral process.
The ECP has developed gender sensitive curriculum/material for training of polling staff on
gender issues faced during the poll day.
The ECP has engaged National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to focus on
those electoral areas where women registration is less than 40 % as compared to men. To
increase the number of women candidates, the Electoral Law 2017 makes it mandatory for
political parties to allocate 5 % of the tickets to women contestants.
NADRA has been asked to send Mobile Registration Vans (MRVs) for issuing of National
Identity Cards to women in less registered areas.
The data of less registered women has also been shared with District Voter Education
Committee to raise awareness for grassroots communities and facilitate the women in
far-flung areas to get registered as voters.
The Election Commission has made a check-list for polling stations to be gender sensitive
whereby it mentions that to make polling stations accessible to People with Disabilities and
Women it must be ensured that the polling stations are at ground floor, well-lit and in an
accessible area.
Moreover, the sources said tender for procurement of election material has been finalized.
The quality of election material including foldable screens, official code mark stamps, polling
bags, etc has been improved.
The Federal Election Academy has been established at Postal staff college G-8/4,
Islamabad to improve skill of ECP staff. “Interpersonal Skills and Capacity Development
Training Programmes” are being conducted regularly. Apart from that, polling staff will be
trained for which lists from various departments have been procured (four provinces)
for selection of well-reputed Polling Personnel.
The ECP has procured 150 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and 100 Bio-metric
Verification Machines (BVMs) by following PPRA rules.
Meanwhile, ECP would start reviewing electoral rolls from January 15.
The ECP would include as many as 73,60,000 new voters in electoral rolls. The
total number of voters would become 100.04 million. The names of 4.72 million men
and 3.287 million women voters would be included in new voter lists.
Persons, having new CNICs would be included in electoral rolls whereas the names
of 923,000 voters would be deleted from the electoral rolls. Out of which 634,000 are
men (68.62 %) and 289,000 (31.37) women voters. Voter lists would be displayed at
each district for people’s review.
Applications for rectifying anomalies in the names in electoral rolls would also be
received.