The National Identity Card (NID) for adult citizens is used as a voter ID card. But its use is not limited to the exercise of voting only. In fact, it is an essential document, without which it is no longer possible to do anything- from buying mobile SIM cards or opening a bank account to selling land. At the moment, the coronavirus vaccination programme is going on across the country. It is mandatory to show the national identity card or a copy of it at the time of vaccination. The implementation of various government programmes has become easier than before due to NID. NID has a very significant role in carrying out the vaccination programme smoothly.
But a report published on the front page of Prothom Alo last Sunday reveals that there are still many problems in the protection of this essential document. Lakshmikant Roy, a schoolteacher from Kakeya Tepa village in Lalmonirhat Sadar upazila, went to register online for coronavirus vaccination with his national identity card and found that his NID number is not enlisted. The upazila election officer searched the documents and informed him that a person with a national identity card named Lakshmikant Roy had died a few years ago.
The investigation revealed that a person went to the election office and said that Lakshmikant Roy was dead and that he should be removed from the voter list. It is seen that the official process of removing someone’s name from NID list is such that it has been possible to invalidate the national identity card of the person through false information. The process of attestation and presenting evidence is so lax that many like Lakshmikant Roy are thus listed as dead and can be dropped from the voter list and the national list of citizens of Bangladesh. It was learned from the incident of Lakshmikant Roy that only in Lalmonirhat sadar upazila, eight living persons have been shown dead and their names have been removed from the voters list.
This suggests that many people may have been removed from the voter list in the same process in other parts of the country. The matter is worrying. The accuracy of the national list of citizens will be lost this way, the excluded citizens will be deprived of the right to vote, and there will be problems in getting other services. Therefore, the opportunity to remove the name from the voter list illegally, which was seen in this case, should be addressed immediately. A committee has been formed to investigate the incident in Lalmonirhat. We hope that this will lead to a solution to the issue of Lakshmikant Roy and at the same time to remove the chance to delete names from the national identity card.
On the other hand, the process of getting a national identity card when one reaches the age of becoming a voter, issuing a new one if one loses one's national identity card and correcting the identity card information is becoming complicated and protracted. According to another report by Prothom Alo, 150,000 applications for NID correction are pending. There is a precedent of not getting the corrected card even five years after application. This problem requires emergency solution. In other words, the management of national identity cards should be more efficient and all measures should be taken on an urgent basis to ensure cent per cent protection of citizens' national identity cards. If necessary, initiatives should be taken to build institutional structure.