Four of the 297 Punjab Provincial Assembly (PA) constituencies recorded a voter registration gender gap exceeding the legally permissible threshold of 10 percent, according to the constituency-wise electoral rolls published by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on 3 February 2026.
Punjab’s trajectory on the voter registration gender gap represents the most substantial improvement recorded among all four provinces. During the 2018 general elections, 182 PA constituencies — representing 61.3 percent of the provincial total — recorded a voter registration gender gap above 10 percent. The scale of the disparity at that time reflected a systemic deficit in women’s inclusion in the electoral rolls across the country’s most populous province.
By the 2024 general elections, 165 constituencies had reduced their gender gap below the legal threshold, bringing the number of non-compliant PA constituencies down sharply from 182 to 17 — or 5.7 percent of the provincial total. This represented a near-elimination of the problem at scale and demonstrated that sustained, targeted voter registration interventions can produce measurable results within a defined electoral cycle.
The post-2024 period has continued this trend. Thirteen additional constituencies reduced their gender gap below the 10 percent threshold following the 2024 elections, leaving only four PA constituencies — 1.3 percent of the provincial total — still above the legal limit. As of the most recent ECP data, 293 of Punjab’s 297 PA constituencies now record a gender gap at or below the 10 percent threshold, representing 98.7 percent of the province.
The persistence of the gap in four constituencies — despite the dramatic province-wide improvement — suggests that these represent areas with particularly entrenched barriers to women’s registration, requiring targeted and sustained institutional action rather than province-wide generalised campaigns.
What the Elections Act requires
The continued presence of a gap of this nature underscores the need for sustained institutional action. Section 47(1) of the Elections Act, 2017 requires the ECP to annually publish disaggregated data of registered male and female voters in each constituency and to highlight the difference in their numbers. Under Section 47(2), the Commission must take special measures in any constituency where this difference exceeds 10 percent, including measures to reduce this variation. Section 47(3) further specifies that these measures shall include action by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to expedite National Identity Card (NIC) issuance for women in affected constituencies, and by the ECP to enroll them as voters in the relevant electoral area. This provision places a clear, joint institutional responsibility on both NADRA and the ECP to address the gender gap where it crosses the legal threshold.
These measures include targeted voter registration campaigns, NIC facilitation drives, and community-level outreach to address the barriers that continue to limit women’s registration. Consistent implementation of these provisions is critical to ensuring that the remaining four constituencies are brought into compliance ahead of the next general elections.
