ISLAMABAD:Former Secretary-General of Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) Sarwar Bari on Saturday said the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) would help ensure transparency in the polls to great extent and end the involvement of Polling Officers (POs) by 99 per cent.
“About 99 percent involvement of POs in the election process after the introduction of EVMs will come to an end and the chances of rigging will be eliminated to great extent as compared to the old election process,” he said while talking to a private television channel.
He said the EVMs would minimize the role of humans in the election process as now “it will be done through the machines.”
He said the use of EVMs was a part of the strategic plan 2019-23 of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) but no development had been made in that regard.
He said it was a commitment of the ECP to use EVMs, start a biometric system and give the right of vote to overseas Pakistanis through internet-voting.
“As per the plan, it was agreed by the ECP that EVMs will be utilized again and again as a pilot project but it was unfortunate that the exercise was the ECP done it once only,” he regretted.
Now, he said a bill related to the use of EVMs had also been passed by the Parliament and this technology would be used in the upcoming general elections. “This is the matter of rule of law, so I fully support it.”
Sarwar Bari said free elections meant that every registered voter of the country must be allowed to choose their candidates and exercise voting rights with his/her free will in a conducive atmosphere.
He recalled that after the 2013 elections, protests were started in the country as the form 14 was not given to contesting candidates after the vote-count ended at polling stations.
He said he had witnessed some forms 14 in which counting were mentioned wrong and the number of votes was written on blank papers.
He said without intimating, the ECP had changed the numbers of polling stations and in some cases polling booth were merged.
He also questioned Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA) for spending funds on ECP employees and their families, adding the TDEA without approval of the board had spent funds on traveling and accommodation of ECP employees and family members.
Sarwar Bari said as a result of investigation into the 2013 elections, it had come to the FAFEN’s notice that the TDEA committed forgery in the forms of a number of constituencies.