Karachi voter lists complete: Nadra chairman

The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) in Pakistan has announced that the Karachi voter lists will be handed to the Election Commission shortly.

Reported first in Dawn.com, Nadra Chairman, Tariq Malik indicated that the lists would be handed over in two days, as data collection is now complete. The chairman continued to say that Nadra was committed to the Electoral Commission to ensure a democratic election process.

There are 86 million registered voters in the country and during data collection, Nadra was issuing as many as 15,000 computerized ID cards daily.

Elections in the country are set to take place in May, and this has been a large undertaking for Nadra. Reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf recently directed Nadra to ensure that computerized national identity cards would be issued to the unregistered population before the upcoming election.

Nadra has been in the news lately for its recently unsuccessful mandate for all telecom operators to install biometric verification systems for SIM card sales, in an attempt to reduce rates of crime. Reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, Nadra and telecoms successfully carried out testing and integration. Backend software, data collection and verification, as well as the establishment of recommended and open standard devices had also been confirmed, though absent officials in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has extended this period indefinitely.

Many countries are implementing or have already used biometric systems for elections, and in particular, both Kenya and Ghana have recently completed elections using biometric verification devices.

Reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, Malawi is set to join this growing list of countries using biometric voter registration for its upcoming elections.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  civil ID  |  elections  |  identity verification  |  NADRA