LB polls to be held in 2011: EC

[sparklingway]

LB polls to be held in 2011: EC​

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
News Desk

RAWALPINDI: The Election Commission (EC) announced on Tuesday that the local bodies elections would be held in 2011 instead of 2010 on the basis of the computerised voter lists.

This announcement was made by Secretary Election Commission Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan after a meeting here on Tuesday, which was presided over by Chief Election Commissioner Justice Hamid Ali Mirza. He said the voter lists would be prepared in six months with the help of the Nadra.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira, the secretaries local bodies of the four provinces, provincial election commissioners and senior officials.

Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan said the preparation of the voter lists and holding of the elections were the constitutional responsibilities of the Election Commission. He said new error-free voter lists would be prepared through the Nadra database. He said it had been decided that the new voter lists would be prepared with the collaboration of the Election Commission and the Nadra, and after it the problem of error-free voter lists would be solved. He said suitable amendments would be introduced and it would be mandatory to show the computerised identity card to cast the vote.

He said the government had assured that the appropriate amendments would be made in the law in this regard. He said the preparation of the new voter lists would take six months and after that the local bodies elections would be held. He said that the four provinces would be taken on board through the Ministry of Local Bodies to introduce uniform laws to hold the LB elections. He said that the all the political parties would be consulted on the issue of election symbols to hold the elections on party basis and all the matters would be settled by taking all the political parties into confidence.

 

[Khalids]

Hoping for a better outcome of forthcoming LB elections in 2011, I also hope that the out-of-parliament political parties would participate in these elections, especially TI and (proposed) All Pakistan Muslim League, to show their commitment to the democratic electoral process. This should be the only way for the political process to evolve in our society.

These LB elections would also be an indicator of what present governments, federal and provincial, have done for the people and how people rate them. And also a test of how much popular are the parties that are seen only on media. These parties have enough time to educate the masses to vote a suitable candidate. Would the workers of these parties come out to access the masses? Waiting.