Law Minister Anisul Huq yesterday told parliament that the government was planning to introduce a provision for the people to file applications online so that they could receive duplicate copies of their national identity cards or correct them.
He hoped such move would reduce public hassles in the present process and said introduction of the online system would also enable people to get corrected national identity cards in one day.
Replying to a question from Awami League MP Abdul Latif (Chittagong), the minister said many people thronged the Election Commission’s one-stop service centre at the Islamic Foundation building in Dhaka, even though correction of the identity cards was possible at upazila level.
He said people snubbed the upazila level offices of the commission, which took at least 15 days to correct the national identity cards while the Dhaka office through its one-stop service centre provided the same in one day, if necessary.
The minister said 10 booths of the centre in Dhaka served, on average, 1,500 people demanding duplicate national identity cards or its correction.
“To reduce public hassles, the national identity card service has spread up to the upazila level through its decentralisation. Besides this, the EC is processing the provision for submitting applications online.”
Anisul said service would be provided through virtual private network, which if put in place, would give duplicate national identity cards or correct them in one day as done in Dhaka.
Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury who was chairing the sitting tabled the ministers’ question-answer script without discussion, restricting the MPs to make any supplementary questions on the issue.