EC completes voter list update

The Election Commission has updated the draft voters' list for this year, adding more than 3.3 million new voters to the roll. Part of the commission's work was also to update the list of the deceased voters, which currently stands at 1.5 million, removing them from the voters' list, said Election Commission acting secretary Helaluddin Ahmed on Thursday at the Election Commission Secretariat in Agargaon, Dhaka. He also said the commission would distribute Smart National Identity Cards (NID) to all registered voters before the 11th parliamentary election. Registered voters who have yet to get their NIDs will get the laminated one before getting the Smart NIDs, he added. “The total number of new voters to be added to the list is nearly 4.3 million, as around 962,000 new voters from 2015 will also be added this year,” the acting secretary said. The Election Commission has also gotten a new software on information management to make corrections on NIDs easier, which will be officially in use from January, said National Identity Registration Wing Director General Brig Gen Saidul Islam. Once the service begins, Election Commission officials at upazila level will no longer have to deal with the corrections and can have information transferred to the regional offices within 10 days of application submission. The regional offices can transfer the details to the head office automatically. Applicants can track the entire process online in real time so they know the progress of their application, Saidul added.

French company fined for failing to deliver NIDs

The Election Commission has hit French company Oberthur Technologies with a Tk139.90-crore fine for failing to deliver Smart NIDs on time. NID Director General Brig Gen Sultanuzzaman Md Saleh Uddin said: “The French company failed to supply 90 million Smart NIDs in the time frame stipulated by our agreement, so they paid the fine as compensation.” He said the Election Commission was now preparing the Smart NIDs themselves. “They [the French company] could supply 13 million cards in 30 months, but we can do that in three months with the capacity that we have. “Because we are now working on it, we will be able to save the government Tk123 crore,” the NID chief added. According to the Election Commission, about 4.2 million Smart NIDs have already been distributed among registered voters. Another 19.2 million Smart NIDs are ready for distribution, but inadequate supply of fingerprint scanner and iris scanner has stalled the process. The Election Commission will start distributing Smart NIDs in the districts on December 31 after they finish distributing them in the city corporations.