(Sahara Reporters) The Independent National Electoral Commission has responded to criticisms of the ongoing third phase of the distribution of the permanent voter cards.

It denied conspiring with any group and assured the public of its commitment towards ensuring that every properly registered voter get their permanent voter card for the 2015 general election.

In a statement on Sunday by Mr. Kayode Idowu, the Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, the commission said contrary to allegations in some quarters, no duly registered person has been delisted from the register of voters, neither will any be denied their PVC.

The commission said it was making efforts to resolve the “temporary challenges” that have been experienced during the exercise in some of the nine states, where the exercise started on Friday.

It said, “In particular, it is completely false that INEC has removed the records of 1.4 million persons from the Register of Voters compiled in 2011 in Lagos State. It is true that at the end of the 2011 general registration exercise, the commission announced a figure of 6.1 million registrants in the state. But when that data was subjected to the Automated Fingerprints Identification System software, 82,892 multiple registrations were eliminated.

“Also, there was the technical challenge of loss of data and incomplete data affecting about one million records – mostly in 1,792 polling units that were identified and made public before the present exercise. That was why and how the Post-Business Rule figure for Lagos State (on the basis of which PVCs were printed) came down to about 4.6 million registrants.”

“For avoidance of doubt, a pre-acknowledged data loss and incomplete data of some registrants is not a ‘conspiracy’ issue as has been alleged by some notable persons. It is a back-end technical challenge that is far from sealing the fate of affected persons, and for which INEC has already put in place measures to ensure redress.”

The statement also said INEC has made provision for eligible persons for whom PVCs could not be printed due to data loss or defective data to come out from Wednesday, November 12 to Monday, November 17, 2014 for their data to be recaptured during the CVR.