Overseas Pakistanis prevented from casting ballot in 2018 elections. Only five days are left in Pakistan’s general elections however despite the election craze, there is disappointing news for overseas Pakistanis as they won’t be able to cast their votes in upcoming election 2018.
It is important to mention that the Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar had ordered the relevant officials to allow overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes and to fulfill that order as, an online voting system was developed by NADRA a few months ago.
In this regard, there have been some images circulating over social media that claim that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and NADRA have developed an Online Voting System for overseas Pakistanis through which they can cast their votes from abroad.
However, now that is not possible for them as all rumors in this regard were laid to rest by NADRA Thursday evening.
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According to NADRA, only Pakistanis who are presentand registered voters in the country can cast their votes. Moreover, they do not take into account any images and messages on social media regarding to the same issue.
Despite the order of Chief justice, the system is not ready to perform as the reliability of such a system was questioned by IT experts.According to IT experts, sensitive data from this kind of system can be stolen easily through hacking.
Below you can see the copy of image which is being shared in different on different social media platforms and WhatsApp groups as well
In this image, we can see that it lists a step by step guide on how to register for voting, the eligibility criteria, and much more. However, this information is based on anearlier report from 3 months ago when the system was being developed and IT experts had yet to test out and approve it.
On the other hand, the website for overseas Pakistanis www.overseasvoting.gov.pk isn’t online as well. Until that time, NADRA officials declared that the ‘online voting for overseas Pakistanis can be experimented in by-polls”.
Well, time is short and everything is almost finalized including voters’ lists but still no decision has yet been taken on the matter.However, now overseas Pakistanis won’t be able to cast their votes.
NADRA and ECP are set to present a comprehensive presentation before a Supreme Court bench about online voting system after the General Elections.
