More than 86% of the new voters in the country have not got their national identity cards as of on Tuesday, although the Election Commission had plans to finish the process by the end of October.
The EC started the process in the beginning of October and had plans to make sure that all the new voters got their NID cards by the end of the month.
But sources said the commission had managed to provide the cards – essential for practicing voting rights – to only 0.95 million new voters, although it had plans to provide NID cards to all of the more than 7 million newly registered voters in about a month’s time.
Officials of the National Identity Registration Wing of the EC have claimed that they have finished distributing cards to all the voters of 25 districts.
There are more than 1.23 million new voters in these 25 districts.
Seeking anonymity, an official of the commission said: “We have shown that the process of distribution in these [25] districts have been completed, without actually distributing nearly 300,000 cards. Around 950,000 NID cards have so far been distributed among new voters.”
In September, Election Commissioner Md Shah Nawaz said the distribution of NID cards among the new voters in remote areas would start in October and finish by the end of that month.
Moreover, the Dhaka Tribune has come to learn of huge negligence and irregularities in the entire process of registering new voters and the distribution of NID cards.
Two districts – Cox’s Bazar and Kurigram – have been completely left out of the new voter registration process, although the national identity wing of the EC has claimed that the process has been completed in all the 64 districts.
Moreover, in stark contrast with the EC’s plan of distributing cards to all new voters in a month, the NID cards of only 51 districts have so far been sent for printing to the Army Printing Press.
Md Mohsin Ali, director (operations) of the National Identity Registration Wing, said: “Enumerators distributed the cards going from door to door in those districts. Those 300,000 missed out because they were not at home.”
He explained: “Because of the continuous hartal, we could not finish the distribution by October. But, we are trying to finish all works as soon as possible.”
About the two districts that had been left out, he claimed that the registration process in those districts had already been completed. “Only sending the PDF files for printing is left to be done.”
New voters of many districts, including Dhaka, have alleged that neither the enumerators, who were supposed to take the cards to the houses of the voters, ever came nor were they cooperated by government officials when they went to collect the cards.
Anny, a new voter from Dhaka, said she went to the Sher-e-Bangla School in the capital’s Moghbazar three days. But on none of those three days did she find the teacher responsible for distributing the cards.
When asked about the allegations, Mohsin Ali said: “We will take actions against those teachers if we got any complaint.”
Commissioner Shah Nawaz said: “We have been told that the distribution process is finished. But, if the plan fails, we shall definitely look into the matter.”