Field visits end, yet many left off list

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The Election Commission’s (EC) drive for correcting this year’s updated voter list ended yesterday amid allegations of many eligible people’s remaining out of the voter list while the field level EC staff did not turn up at many houses in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
The drive that began on December 8 has also been mired with allegations of irregularities.

A number of field level EC staff told The Daily Star that they could not register many people as voter due to serious shortage of voter registration form.

Besides, they did not get any clear instruction from the EC.

“The Election Commission at one stage directed through media that photocopies of registration form will do, but the temporarily appointed staff, who are mostly poor, felt reluctant to spend money for photocopying the form,” said an EC staff seeking anonymity.

An EC staff, who worked as a supervisor during updating of the voter list a few months back, said he had to spend his own money for photocopying forms that time.

During The Daily Star correspondents’ spot visit in a religious minority dominated area at Rajarbagh in the city yesterday, many people said their names have been deleted from the updated voter roll which the EC used as the base for the just completed correction drive.

Fifty-five year-old Kamala Rani Das, who has been living at Rajarbagh since her marriage, said she cast her vote in previous elections, but this time her name has been deleted from the voter roll.

“After checking the voter list from an Election Commission staff, my husband found that eight of our family members who cast votes in 2001 elections have been dropped from the voter roll,” said an apparently anguished Kamala.

Members of some Hindu families in the locality, who were enrolled in 2000, have been left out from the present list.

Ruhi Chandra Das, 28, said he and four other family members — his mother Austra Dashi, 50, brother Dayal Chandra Das, 45, wife Shilpi, 25, and sister-in-law Parul, 38, — were on the list of 2000, but this time their names have been deleted.

“The Election Commission staff concerned told me that we are not voter as we have no holding number. But the fact is we are residing at Rajarbagh since my birth,” Ruhi said.

Ratan Peter Gomes, assistant headmaster of Avoy Binodini High School in Rajarbagh, said names of nearly three-fourth voters in the minority-dominated area have been crossed in red ink. “Three of my colleagues working as EC staff in the area found the list in this form. So they had nothing to do,” he said.

“A single page of voter list contains details of 24 voters. But except five to six names, the others are crossed in red ink,” Gomes said.

He also said that locals on Sunday submitted to the assistant returning officer a list of 2,500 people who have either been dropped from the list made in 2000 or not been enrolled during the correction drive although they are now 18 or above.

Many locals at Nikunja in the capital alleged that no EC staff visited their addresses during the 12 days of voter list correction task. The Daily Star visited five houses on different lanes in the residential area and talked to the residents all of who said that no EC staff turned up at their addresses.

“As I asked an Election Commission staff why they did not visit my house, he replied that they have only visited the houses directed by local BNP leader Dollar,” Mushfiqur Rahman, a resident of the area, said.

Several thousand eligible people at Nobodoy Housing Project area and Gabtoli Beribandh City Colony in the capital were also not enrolled as voters, locals told The Daily Star over phone yesterday.

Residents of Gabtoli colony where mainly class four employees of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) reside alleged that out of about 1,800 eligible people, only around 300 were included in the updated list.

The situation is even more frustrating at Nobodoy Housing Project in Adabor where, according to locals, around 4,000 eligible people were not registered as voter.

Mostafizur Raman, a resident of Rajapur in Mangalkandi under Shonagazi upazila in Feni yesterday told The Daily Star over telephone that the enumerators showed much negligence in performing their duty to go door to door for correcting the voter list in the area.

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