ISLAMABAD: Acting Chief Election Commissioner Justice Nasirul Mulk refused to see Imran Khan, the chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, on Thursday, a day after the latter had not turned up for a scheduled meeting.

Sources in PTI said Mr Khan did have an appointment with the acting CEC on Wednesday, but he could not make it because he had to receive Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at his Bani Gala residence.

The PTI chief had sought to get the meeting rescheduled for Thursday, but he was informed that the CEC would not be available.

During his meeting with the acting CEC, Mr Khan was to reiterate his demand for introduction of biometric system in the coming local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and discuss his party`s petitionspending before election tribunals.

An ECP official told Dawn that the commission had reservations over the PTFs demand for introduction of biometric system.

He said it had been decided in January this year that the KP government, the National Database Registration Authority and the Election Commission of Pakistan would jointly examine the feasibility of the proposal, but they could not reach a conclusion.

The official said that Nadra did not have fingerprints of 1.2 million voters from KP, adding that it would be a joke to introduce the system in the absence of complete database with biometrics.

He said the results of two pilot projects undertaken in Peshawar and Islamabad were also not encouraging.

Initially, he said, the system was taking 30 seconds in initialisation after each vote was cast. `If there are 500 voters at a polling booth, the initialisation will consume around fourhours that comes to half of the time normally given for polling.

He said 50,000 biometric machines at a cost of around Rs1.5 billion would be required for KP alone. `If Punjab also demands introduction of the biometric system, the cost will be three times higher.

He said the KP government wanted the LG elections to be held in April, but the procedure involving national and international tenders, manufacturing of machines, chipping in the data of each polling station and transportation of biometric machines to polling booths would take at least six months.

The official said there was no provision in law about how to proceed when fingerprints of a genuine voter were not verified by the system. `If the matter is left at the discretion of a presiding officer, it can open a floodgate of rigging and denying a genuine voter his right to franchise will be against the principle of natural justice.