MEDIA reports highlighted ‘unusual’ growth in the country’s new voters’ list as enumerators have already listed 39.28 lakh new voters working at Upazila level against a target of enlisting 24 lakhs when fresh voters in 150 Upazilas are yet to enlisted. Even the Election Commission (EC) officials have been puzzled by the development to show the mismanagement of the sensitive project; which clearly suggest faulty target setting and excessive data entry by field workers apparently on partisan motive. The EC’s target is to update the voters’ list now having 9.62 crore voters with a 2.5 percent growth but the enumerators’ figure already showed a 4.09 percent growth when new voters from one-quarter of the Upazilas are yet to be counted. New voters in some upazilas showed very high growth rate — up to above 8 percent or closer to 9 percent creating doubts on the credibility of the new voters from the beginning.
On the other hand, voter ID information of only 23 lakh youths have so far been collected who are under-18 nationals whereas the data of the Commission estimated 48 lakh youths on the basis of the new list to get the ID card. EC Secretary has been quoted in the report as saying that the main reason behind the high growth may be that many school drop-outs are now more interested to be voters for having the National Identity Cards and they are making their place on the list by hook or by crook.
It appears that the new way of collecting data for voter IDs spells nothing but disaster for the nation. Instead of going door-to-door for data collection and verification, data is being reportedly collected in clusters; which makes way for the mass data collection to be fraught with irregularities. It is essential that door-to-door verification must take places so that the new voters’ list must have accurate portrayal of the number of legal voters in the country.
As it appears that the current practice leaves many loopholes for unscrupulous people to become new voters. But in doing so the credibility of the new voters’ list and its accuracy and transparency have been totally lost. The voter ID concept and consequent list making of voters is an appreciable process necessary to conduct a fair and transparent election. It is also highly sensitive from the national security perspective. But enumerators are creating many irregularities in making the new voter ID list which is bound to create many administrative problems and data errors to hamper the use of the voter ID list at practical work level.
Anyway, we do not see any chance of fair and free election under the present bureaucratic plan of things. The Election Commission has proved not be a friend of free and fair election.
On the other hand, voter ID information of only 23 lakh youths have so far been collected who are under-18 nationals whereas the data of the Commission estimated 48 lakh youths on the basis of the new list to get the ID card. EC Secretary has been quoted in the report as saying that the main reason behind the high growth may be that many school drop-outs are now more interested to be voters for having the National Identity Cards and they are making their place on the list by hook or by crook.
It appears that the new way of collecting data for voter IDs spells nothing but disaster for the nation. Instead of going door-to-door for data collection and verification, data is being reportedly collected in clusters; which makes way for the mass data collection to be fraught with irregularities. It is essential that door-to-door verification must take places so that the new voters’ list must have accurate portrayal of the number of legal voters in the country.
As it appears that the current practice leaves many loopholes for unscrupulous people to become new voters. But in doing so the credibility of the new voters’ list and its accuracy and transparency have been totally lost. The voter ID concept and consequent list making of voters is an appreciable process necessary to conduct a fair and transparent election. It is also highly sensitive from the national security perspective. But enumerators are creating many irregularities in making the new voter ID list which is bound to create many administrative problems and data errors to hamper the use of the voter ID list at practical work level.
Anyway, we do not see any chance of fair and free election under the present bureaucratic plan of things. The Election Commission has proved not be a friend of free and fair election.
