Islamabad: Taking a stern stand against forced disenfranchisement of women voters in Swat and Mansehra bye-polls, members of the Senate Standing Committee for Women Development on Wednesday demanded that the results of both districts should be immediately declared null and void.
The joint statement was issued on the occasion of their visit to Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Centre for Women. Regretting inaction by state functionaries over the injustice done to women living in those areas, they said that it was the responsibility of Election Commission (EC) to ensure participation of women voters. “It is highly disappointing that no serious action has yet been taken by the election commission to discourage this discriminatory practice,” said Senator Nilofar Bakhtiar.
Statistics recently issued by Aurat Foundation revealed that a majority of women voters in the said districts were either stopped or circumstances were created where they could not exercise their fundamental right to vote and elect their representatives. It says that in Swat, women could not exercise their right of vote in 32 polling stations out of the total 35 polling stations reserved for women voters whereas in Mansehra women voters could poll their votes only in 20 per cent polling stations.
Blaming all political parties for this discrimination, Senator Nilofar Bakhtiar regretted that in majority of cases, political leaders of the area are also part of such decisions. “Facts have proved that the meetings of area elders which decide excluding women from electoral process are also attended by the representatives of the political parties,” she pointed out.
Focal person for Gender Reform Action Plan (GRAP) in Election Commission Sher Afgan Khan informed the members that currently the commission does not have any legal power to declare such results null and void or take any action against polling stations where women were not allowed to cast vote. “We did not receive any such complaint from the polling stations,” he added.
He said that the commission has proposed Law Ministry to give certain legal powers to EC so that it can take action against such discrimination. “We have proposed that the EC should have power to declare the results of any polling station where women voters do not make 10 per cent of the total votes polled, as null and void. “The EC has also proposed one reserved seat for women from both Fata and Islamabad in the National Assembly and Senate,” he mentioned.
Sher Afgan said that the government has set a target of issuing National Identity Cards (NIC) to 86 million people till the end of this year. “The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) will provide this data to EC and next voter’s lists will be formed according to those statistics,” he said adding that this way, around 40 million women are expected to join the next voter’s list.
“We have also proposed to increase the number of women polling stations from 37,000 to 74,000.”
Source: The News
Date:2/4/2010
