Pakistani women fear losing voting rights ahead of local body polls, here's why

Ahead of next week’s second phase of Pakistan Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s local body election, locals fear that in some of the conservative areas of the province, the right to vote might be taken away from women.

There are some areas in the province, where women can’t step out of their houses to cast votes without the permission of their male family members, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported citing Social activist Zakirullah.

Zakirullah said that the women’s disenfranchisement also takes place in order to favour certain election candidates, while some social activists insisted that women don’t cast their votes due to the local traditions.

Earlier also, he made such remarks that the candidates had made the arrangement to bar the women voters in the PK-28 constituency (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly), but no such arrangements were seen ahead of Pakistan’s local body election.

Even in 2019, Zakirullah said that the women didn’t cast the vote in a by-election in Pazang VC, saying that under the law, re-polling should be started until the minimum numbers of women cast their votes in the electoral process.

Upon the electoral process, Mohammad Aslam, district election commissioner and district monitoring officer said that they are carrying out the campaigns to highlight the importance of vote among the residents.

He further stated that the district election commission with the assistance of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) had sent the mobile registration vans to 110 of 353 blocks in the district, where usually comparable to other places, the lowest numbers of women turned for voting.

"Only four per cent of registered women cast vote in the 2013 general elections and 13 per cent in the 2018 elections, so their overall turnout remained very low," Aslam was quoted as saying by Dawn.

"Bearing the local culture, traditions and norms as well as accessibility issues in mind, we established polling stations for women close to their houses to encourage more and more of them to exercise their right to vote," he said.

Aslam further stated that if the women voters are less than 10 per cent of the total votes then the Pakistan Election Commission would presume that women were restrained from voting and may declare re-polling or more polling stations would be established or election in the whole constituency would be void.

The first phase of elections was held in 17 districts on December 19 and the second phase of KP Local Government polls will be held in the province on March 31.

The Election Commission of Pakistan had on January 20 announced the schedule and a code of conduct for the second phase of local government elections in 18 districts of the province, reported the news channel.

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