The new head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), Gula Jan Abdulbadi Sayyad, on Sunday said that parliamentary and district council elections will be delayed because the commission has lost a lot of time.

AVA-Last year, the IEC announced July 7, 2018 as the parliamentary elections date.

“If we could compensate the wasted time, the elections will be held as scheduled; otherwise, we may announce a new elections date after accurate and comprehensive studies,” Sayyad said.

Meanwhile, he claimed that new plans are underway to avoid any electoral fraud or infractions in the future.

Officials also emphasized that parliamentary polls will be held based on the citizens identity cards.

“We assume that the voters list will include about 13 to 14 million people in Afghanistan who are eligible to cast their votes,” said Wasima Badghisi, deputy head of operations at the IEC. “We will prepare the voters list based on the national identity cards.”

On the other hand, electoral monitoring organizations express their concerns about the performance of the IEC.

“We have always emphasized on holding a transparent elections, but the performance of IEC shows that we will face with challenges,” said Habib Shinwari, a member of the Election Watch of Afghanistan (EWA).

“We emphasize on taking practical actions in order to held a transparent and inclusive election in the country, but there are a lot of concerns regarding the existence of challenges in this process,” said Mujeeb Khelwatgar, the Chief Executive Officer of NAI – an agency supporting open media in Afghanistan.