ISLAMABAD, (MILLAT/APP): Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP)
has taken an initiative to equip itself with the latest facilities
of biometric and electronic voting systems which would be used
during by-elections on trial basis.
Once these EVMs and BVMs machines are delivered by vendors,
the same will be used in multiple pilot testing in upcoming
bye-elections to see their results, Secretary ECP, Babar Yaqub Fateh
Muhammad said this while addressing a contract signing ceremony held
to procure Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) here on Friday.
Director General (Admin) and Chairman ECP Internal Committee
on EVMs and Biomatric Voting Machines (BVMs), Brig (Retd) Abbas Ali
and Chief Executive Officer of M/s Smartmatic International Holding
inked the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations
for procurement of 150 EVMs.
Giving details, the Secretary ECP said an international tender
was floated to acquire EVMs and BVMs last year and six vendors of
EVMs and five vendors of BVMs participated during bidding process.
The companies participated included Smartmatic, Secure Tech, Indra, Reliance (Scytl), National Institute of Electronics (NIE) and National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (NIFT).
He said out of them three firms of EVMs were technically
qualified i.e. Smartmatic, Indra and Reliance (Scytl)
whereas two BVM firms were technically qualified i.e. M/s Secure
Tech and M/s Indra.
There were three international vendors applied
named as Smartmatic, Indra and Scytl during the said
international tendering process.
Talking to media-persons, Babar Yaqub Fateh Muhammad said
all stakeholders like voters, parliamentarians, media, civil society
organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (NG0s), observers and
general public will be invited to witness testing of these new
technologies to attain aspect of inclusiveness and joint
consensus.
He said this is a pilot project and ECP wanted to see the
results by using the system in bye-elections and added at later
stage ECP would decide to use EVMs and BVMs in general elections
keeping in view their all merits and demerits.
However, he said, it would cost around Rs. 35 billion for more
than 0.3 million polling stations, which is a huge amount.
Replying to a question, he said quality of EVMs an BVMs
is our top priority and in this regard a committee having experts
from different organizations was also constituted.
He said training of election officers and staff, general
awareness of voters and better coordination of ECP staff with
voters was also part of pilot project to introduce new system in the
country.
The Secretary said introduction of electronic voting machines
and biometric system was part of bringing reforms in electoral
system and the decision has been taken after feedback of previous
elections. The ECP had consulted with all stakeholders over the
proposed reforms, he added.