ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has designed a Result Management System (RMS) to further improve accuracy, efficiency and transparency of the results tabulation process in upcoming General Election 2018.

The RMS has capacity to store all the scan pages of  Forms-XIV, XVI & XVII along with data, stored into the database, permanently for Audit trail accountability purposes.

Listing the steps being taken to improve overall working of the Commission, official sources on Thursday said Data Bank of officers and officials has already been prepared for onward appointment as Presiding Officers, Assistant Presiding Officers and Polling Officers to facilitate their training well before elections.

Similarly, Independent Monitoring Wing has been established in the ECP to oversee pre-poll, post-poll activities and point out illegal practices, including huge spending on electoral exercises in violation of Law.

The sources said that interaction with Political Parties and Civil Society organizations were held for preparation and finalization of existing Code of Conduct to get their feedback/suggestions for making improvement in election process.

They said as many as 130 District Voters Education Committees are being formed to motivate general public, especially women, persons with disabilities, transgender and other marginalized groups with help of civil society organizations, notables of area and relevant departments in each district to take part in electoral activities including registration of votes.

The ECP has engaged National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to focus on those electoral areas where women registration is less than 40 % as compared to men.

To increase the number of women candidates, the Electoral Law 2017 makes it mandatory for political parties to allocate 5 % of the tickets to women contestants.

NADRA has been asked to send Mobile Registration Vans (MRVs) for issuing of National Identity Cards to women in less registered areas.

Moreover, the sources said tender for procurement of election material has been finalized.

The quality of election material including foldable screens, official code mark stamps, polling bags, etc has been improved.

The ECP has procured 150 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and 100 Bio-metric Verification Machines (BVMs) by following PPRA rules.

Meanwhile, ECP would start reviewing electoral rolls from January 15.

The ECP would include as many as 73,60,000 new voters in electoral rolls. The total number of voters would become 100.04 million. The names of 4.72 million men and 3.287 million women voters would be included in new voter lists.— APP