The Election Commission has revised its previously announced schedule of providing national identity cards to over 7 million new voters and set September 15 for starting the work.
The commission also decided to text the names of respective polling centres and voter serial numbers to the voters prior to the next parliamentary elections, sources familiar with the process said.
The printing of an updated voter list is likely to start today at the Army Printing Press, as per a commission decision taken Monday.
The identity cards will be distributed district-wise, in a “chronological order,” starting with Dhaka. There are around 508,465 new voters in Dhaka district and 367,460 in the Dhaka City Corporation.
However, the commission is still undecided about how to distribute the cards, with options ranging from going door-to-door for the purpose to inviting voters to collect them on their own.
In case of the latter option, newly enlisted voters would collect their cards from the respective zonal office of the commission.
“We will sit to take a decision on the matter, within a day or two,” said Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad Monday.
Earlier, the voter list was updated from March 10 to December 15 last year and a final list which estimated the total number of voters at 92,129,852 was published on January 31 this year.
The commission which began giving ID cards in 2008 is spending Tk3 against each card, with the total costs in the regard surpassing Tk21m.
About the printing of voter list starting today, Dr Mohammad Sadik, secretary of the election commission, said it would be printed keeping “unchanged” voters’ serial numbers.
“This way, there would be no scope for any misunderstanding among the political parties and voters,” he added.
