ISLAMABAD, June 11: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has expressed concern over the names of 20 million voters missing from the new electoral rolls. It called upon Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retd) Qazi Mohammad Farooq to immediately issue the electronic provisional electoral lists to all political parties to demonstrate his impartiality.

In a statement issued from Dubai and released by the party’s Media Centre here on Monday, PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto said the law permitted the Election Commission of Pakistan to issue the lists to the parties.

Ms Bhutto said the electronic format of provisional electoral lists was essential for political parties to verify through whether an honest job had been done. She said the PPP believed that a test of the impartiality of the commission would be to provide the provisional lists in electronic format to political parties.

"Failure to do so will give rise to the suspicion that the ECP has something to hide and will cast a shadow over the elections even before the first ballot is cast," she said.

Ms Bhutto said it was the constitutional duty of the election commission to hold honest elections. However, she said, unfortunately in the past it had broken the law by failing to stop riggings either through collusion or impunity.

Ms Bhutto said the people of Pakistan were no longer prepared to accept rigging. She said the recent movement of the masses in support of the chief justice was a trailer of the movement that would begin if anti-people forces tried to steal another election in a country groaning with poverty, injustice, lawlessness, militancy, terrorism and extremism. She said the Constitution did not prohibit the commission from providing the provisional electoral lists to the parties whose suspicions about provisional electoral lists needed to be removed.

It may be recalled that the commission has announced that the fresh computerised electoral rolls with 50.21 million registered voters will be put on display throughout the country from Tuesday, inviting claims, objections and applications for corrections.

It had set up 45,503 display centres in the 111 districts of the country and seven agencies of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas where these electoral rolls would remain on display till July 3.