Under-fire ECP gets another blow

ISLAMABAD  - Continuing to remain under fire for its notable failure to introduce foolproof electoral system for the conduct of free and fair general elections, the poll authority on Friday got another blow after a governmental body stood its ground to dismiss election commission’s allegations directed at it regarding fake-voting in Karachi.
The reported development followed a meeting held in Karachi between the senior officials of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR).
In a separate move, the Ministry of Science and Technology constituted a three-member committee to probe into the allegations regarding allegedly substandard ink/magnetic inkpads supplied to the ECP during the general elections 2013. The committee is to prepare its findings by the coming November 1.
The Friday meeting, the ECP sources said, was kept on a low key considering the ‘adverse’ response the commission got from the council on fake-voting issue.
According to details, Director Provincial Election Commission Sindh Muhammad Najeeb on Thursday wrote a letter to the Chairman PCSIR Dr Shoukat Pervaiz informing that Sindh’s Provincial Election Commissioner (PEC) Tariq Qadri wanted to meet the officials concerned at the PCSIR who were involved in the preparation of the magnetic ink used in this year’s general elections.
In compliance, the chairman PCSIR assigned the council’s Director General (Karachi Laboratory Complex) Naimat Hussain Rizvi to meet the PEC Sindh and give relevant briefing. The PCSIR, in the meeting held Friday, conveyed to the ECP that its magnetic ink was prepared according to the ECP-prescribed standards and it was lab-tested in the presence of ECP officials earlier this year. Reportedly, the PCSIR offered the ECP to verify the authenticity of the magnetic ink in any lab as per the commission’s desire.
The ECP insiders said, the scientific council flatly refused to accept the ECP stance on the substandard ink, saying, it was the ECP that had ordered the printing of substandard paper from the Printing Corporation of Pakistan (PCP), which resulted in the surfacing of thousands of unverified votes that could not be traced by NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority). The next meeting between the ECP and PCSIR is scheduled in Islamabad sometime soon, officials said.  
In a conversation with this scribe earlier on Thursday, Chairman PCSIR Dr Shoukat Pervaiz had rejected the ECP-leveled accusations that the council had provided substandard magnetised ink during May 11 general elections. “Our experts had tested the ink multiple times. We also conducted a number of sample-tests in the presence of the ECP officials. They had examined the magnetic ink’s standard and had expressed satisfaction, then. We are just surprised to know that PCSIR is being dragged into this controversy. Had the magnetic ink been substandard, not a single vote would have been verified. It’s beyond comprehension how could some votes be readable and some not if the magnetic ink lacked the desired standard,” he had said. The ECP’s Director General (Elections) Syed Sher Afgan has publicly admitted that ECP had ordered the PCP to prepare the ballot papers using a cheaper quality paper compared to the one that was earlier prescribed. This, Sher Afgan says, was done considering that ECP had only 21 days for printing 20 million ballot papers while the printing of originally prescribed fine quality ballot papers required 45 days.
The political parties have categorically rejected this explanation saying it was the ECP’s prime responsibility not to compromise quality at any cost and to make all the necessary electoral arrangements in time.  “We reject this lame excuse. It’s the ECP that was to make foolproof arrangements for general polls,” senior leader and Chief Election Commissioner of PTI Hamid Khan Advocate said.
“This proves our contention right.  The general polls were massively rigged due to the criminal negligence of ECP with the involvement of returning officers and electoral machinery,” he told The Nation.
The political parties, especially PTI, have categorically slammed the ECP for its failure to act against what they describe as unprecedented rigging in general elections. The PTI’s 2500-page White Paper pinpoints hundreds of rigging instances along with the documentary evidence.
A report from NADRA reveals that out of 84,748 votes polled in certain polling stations of National Assembly’s constituency NA-256 in Karachi on May 11, only 6,815 were authenticated while 77,933 were unverified out of which 11,343 ballot papers contained invalid CNIC numbers which were never issued by the registration authority.
The report said, there were 5,839 duplicate votes. The CNIC numbers on 1,950 ballots papers did not match with CNIC mentioned on the counterfoils. The NADRA had conducted the thumb impression verification in the two constituencies on the direction of election tribunal (ETs) that hears a petition on massive poll-rigging during the general polls.