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Download PDF The Election Commission (EC) yesterday achieved its target of registering eight crore voters with their photographs taken, within the deadline stipulated by the electoral roadmap, putting to rest all skepticism about the project’s success.
The commission also has the electronic database of the eight crore voters ready, which perhaps will be one of the largest electronic databases of electoral rolls in the world while being definitely the largest among developing countries, claimed senior officials engaged in the mammoth project that began in August last year.
A few lakh more voters might still be added to the list by the June 30 deadline for wrapping up the field level work of voter registration, the officials added.
The entries are being checked and re-checked leaving no room for duplication, they noted.
Bangladesh Army has been helping the EC in the project since its inception.
Distribution of national identity cards for the voters, which are being prepared simultaneously with the voter list with photographs, will also be completed by the end of October, sources said.
The number of voters on the current list with photographs is set to drop by at least 1.2 crore compared to the previous list prepared by the immediate past controversial EC led by Justice MA Aziz.
On the previous list, prepared in 2006, the number was 9.30 crore, which was later scrapped due to a large number of duplications and other errors on it, costing the exchequer Tk 60 crore for nothing.
The violent dispute that raged over the 2006 voter list was one of the pivotal reasons for the rather unorthodox changeover of power on 1/11/2007 and the subsequent stalling of the ninth parliamentary election, originally scheduled for January 22 of the same year.
Earlier, between 1994 and 1995 the state lost over Tk 100 crore as the erstwhile EC failed to deliver after it had taken up a project for distributing voter ID cards.
Given the size of the country’s population, the current EC earlier estimated that the number of voters would be around eight crore.
Elated by the whopping success, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has been assisting the EC in the job, is planning to celebrate the achievement at the end of July, sources said.
Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, who inaugurated the field level work of voter registration in Rajshahi City Corporation area in August last year, is expected to join the grand celebration as the chief guest.
Civil and military bureaucrats involved in the project, and officials of different foreign missions in Dhaka will also be invited.
According to a progress report prepared by the project headquarters, till June 22 a total of 7.97 crore voters were registered.
The field level work of voter registration is still going on in 41 areas with one lakh voters on an average being registered daily.
“We are sure that eight crore voters have been registered by today. However, we will receive a confirmation report from the field within two or three days,” a senior official engaged in voter listing said yesterday.
With the completion of registrations in the remaining 41areas by June 30, the field level work will come to a successful end within the deadline stipulated in the electoral roadmap announced by the EC on July 15 of last year.
The EC launched the highly ambitious project for preparing the national voter list with photographs in an effort to put an end to persistent controversies over voter lists, amid widespread skepticism about its success.
The national voter list with photographs is being prepared by the EC under the auspices of a UNDP project titled ‘Preparation of Electoral Roll with Photographs and Facilitating the Issuance of National Identity Cards’, to the tune of an estimated Tk 424 crore with
Tk 274 crore of it coming from contributions made by different foreign donor agencies and countries.
Along with the field level voter registration, printing of the voter list is also going on in full swing under active supervision of the army.
Till yesterday, final voter lists for 120 areas including city corporations and upazilas were printed while printing of the final voter lists for 18 other areas is going on.
Draft voter lists for 311 areas out of a total 522 areas were printed till yesterday.
Over 3 crore national identity cards were prepared till yesterday, 1.56 crore of which had already been distributed, officials engaged in the voter listing project said.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
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