New voters across the country would get their National Identity Cards (NID) in October, as printing of the cards is soon to be completed. However, the Election Commission plans to give NIDs to new voters in Dhaka from the second week of this month, said officials Monday.
The EC will send the cards to all upazila election offices, where voters can collect their cards.
The commission updated the voter list from March 10 to December 15 last year and a final voter list was published on January 31 this year.
About 6.9m new voters were included in the latest list, while over 7m new voters were included when the list was updated during the period of 2010 to 2012.
Around 508,465 new voters in Dhaka district and 367,460 new voters of Dhaka Mahanagar will receive NID cards, said sources.
They said the printing process for Dhaka district voters has been completed, while printing for the rest of the districts would be completed within September.
The EC is spending Tk3 on each NID card, which includes the production and distribution costs, while the total cost is over Tk21m.
But the commission is yet to decide how to distribute NID cards to new voters. Options may involve door-to-door distribution by the EC, or the new voters may have to collect NID cards from respective EC offices in their area.
Seeking anonymity, a director of the EC’s NID wing said new voters of Dhaka would get their NID cards in the second week of this month. He also said the EC would start providing NID cards across the country from October.
According to the updated voter list, the country has 92,129,852 voters in total.
The EC began giving NID cards to voters in 2008, with assistance from the UNDP.
