ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and jail authorities to facilitate inmates across the country’s prisons to cast their votes in the upcoming elections, a sizeable number of prisoners would still be unable to exercise their right to franchise.

According to the law, a prison inmate can cast their vote via postal ballot. Those eligible to vote under sections 26 and 96-D of the Elections Act 2017 can send a request to the relevant returning officer (RO) of their constituency before the deadline for finalising mail-in ballots.

The RO will verify the request with the help of the voting list of their area, and if the names of the aspiring votes are in the same constituency, the concerned RO will send two envelopes to the jail administration.

One will contain the address of the RO, with a small and a large envelope inside it. After casting their vote, the inmate has to hand over the envelope to the jail administration, which is bound to return it to the concerned RO through the post, ensuring that the votes are counted.

However, according to an official from Karachi’s Central Prison, the run-up to these elections marks the “first time” that the ECP had formally communicated with jail authorities and asked them to guide inmates about the procedure of casting votes.

An ECP spokesperson said the commission had written to the officials of Karachi Central Jail to facilitate inmates and make them aware of all formalities so that all of them are able to vote through postal ballots.

However, this exercise was carried out hardly a week before the expiry of the deadline for submission of applications for postal ballots, which was January 22.

In a statement issued on Jan 17, ECP had said it had conducted a pre-poll exercise in the women’s section of Karachi’s largest prison to guide inmates on the process of exercising their right to vote through postal ballots. This too was done only a few days before the deadline.

According to data issued by the ECP, 449,287 people from around the country had applied for postal ballots this time around.

Besides prisoners, the applicants include differently-abled persons, polling and security staff on election duty and other government officials. But only 145 inmates from Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail sent in such applications. DSP Ammad Chandio of Karachi’s Central Jail did not provide exact numbers, but said that ‘hundreds of inmates’ had applied to cast their votes through postal ballots.

Currently, the facility has over 6,800 inmates. Of these, more than 5,880 are under trial and over 950 have been convicted. The estimate of ‘hundreds’ provided by the official shows that even now, a majority of inmates will still be unable to vote.

The most common hurdle to inmates casting their votes is the absence of a valid CNIC, or their ID cards having expired.