EC to correct mistakes in NIDs in Ctg by this month

H M Jasim Uddin, Chattogram Bureau

The Election Commission (EC) is considering to correct mistakes in the NIDs of the district’s residents by this month.

Rahim Ullah, a resident of Boalkhali Upazila, has become a voter in the Chawkbazar area of the city. Although the Bangla spelling of his name on the NID is correct, there is a mistake in the English spelling. He has been suffering for four months.

Rahim said, “My children are suffering with my NID. I applied for correction three months ago. I have not been able to correct it yet. It seems like I have to pay a big price for a small mistake.”

Not only Rahim Ullah, thousands of people are suffering with the correction of their NIDs. They have been paying a price for small mistakes for a long time.

Meanwhile, the EC has directed field officers to settle the ‘C’ category, i.e. relatively complex and old applications for the correction of the NID, on priority basis. Last Monday, the Director of the NID Division, Md Saiful Islam, issued an office order in this connection. The order said that all senior district election officers of 64 districts and additional regional election officers of 10 regions have been given the responsibility of conducting a crush programme to resolve applications for correction of NIDs. Instructions have been given to resolve pending applications by June 30.

EC officials said that the Election Commission wants to resolve the NID correction applications before starting preparations for the upcoming 13th parliamentary election in full swing. Some people said that in some their NIDs, the names of their wives are in place of their mothers’ names, in some NIDs, their own names, etc. Despite applying for correction, they have not received any solution for a long time.

According to sources from the District Election Office, currently 21,603 applications of four categories are pending. However, this number was about 53,000 in December. Various applications for NID correction in four categories are being disposed of. Of these, applications of category ‘A’ are disposed of in the Upazila and Thana Election Offices. Applications of category ‘B’ are disposed of in the District Office, category ‘C’ is disposed of in the Regional Office and category ‘D’ is disposed of in the Dhaka Election Commission Secretariat.

It can be seen that 9,871 applications are pending in the District Office, 1,397 in the Upazila-Thana Office, 9,928 in the Regional Office (5 districts) and 407 in the Dhaka Election Commission. The serial for correction of these applications has not been sent yet.

Chattogram District Senior Election Officer Md Bashir Uddin said, “We have disposed of 21,155 applications in the 5 and a half months since taking charge. Currently, 13,284 applications are pending. It will be completed within the current month. We have launched a crush programme in this connection since last month. Seven officers are working on the corrections together.”

It is alleged that many people are falling victim to a ring of brokers formed in the Election Commission taking advantage of their suffering.

Last December, there were 53,000 applications related to the correction of the NID in Chattogram district and regional offices. Of these, 28,512 were in the district office. There were 2,267 in the 21 upazila and thana offices of the district. And 22,513 applications from the Chattogram region are pending in the Chattogram regional office.

Chattogram District Senior Election Officer Bashir Ahmed said, “Minor mistakes are being corrected as soon as the minimum documents are submitted. You don’t have to come to the office for this. Considering everything, we have undertaken a crush programme to bring the number of correction applications to zero within this month.”