Observer Report Islamabad
Minister for Science and Technology Shibli Faraz on Wednesday said his ministry has submitted a report to a technical committee of the Election Commission of Pakistan regarding electronic voting machines which “addressed all the problems” pointed out by the ECP.
The minister made the comment during a press conference in Islamabad a day after the ECP raised 37 objections to the introduction of EVMs in a document submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs.
Faraz said that 27 of the objections raised by the ECP were related to the election commission’s current capabilities while 10 were related to EVMs.
The EVM developed by the Ministry of Science and Technology addressed all 10 of those objections, he said, while emphasising that the 27 other concerns were “not the ministry’s work”.
He shared that the ECP had formed a technical committee to analyse the EVMs at the end of July. A technical team of the Ministry of Science and Technology participated in the first meeting of the committee which was held Wednesday.
It submitted “most of the reports” that the ECP had asked for, the minister said, adding that additional documents would be provided to the ECP in the next meeting which is due to be held on Sept 15.
The minister denied that the ECP’s objections were related to the technical aspects of the EVM as it was being analysed technically by the ECP for the first time today, insisting that “we have solved all the problems in this (report submitted to the Election Commission).”
