Noman Mosharef :
People are facing immense suffering in availing NID card related services, including its correction, due to indifference of the concerned Election Commission officials.
Many even raised the allegation of harassment by Thana Election officials while getting the services.
“I came here to get my name corrected in NID but nobody is sincerely paying heed to my appeal. Even they behaved harshly when I asked for necessary information for NID correction, ” one Monir Hossain, who came to Keraniganj Thana Election Office, on Monday told The New Nation.
The story of the couple Faysal Ahmed Manik and Mahmuda Ashrafi’s are the best one out of many others who have been enduring huge pain in getting NID related services from the EC’s designated local offices.
Faysal Ahmed Manik who was named Nanda Kumar before his marriage with Muslim girl Mahmuda Ashrafi. He converted to Muslim after the marriage and subsequently changed his name. But he faced huge adversity when he filed an application with the EC to get his name corrected in the NID.
Seven years have elapsed, but he failed to get the desired service due to apathy of the EC officials.
“I did not get the NID with changed name even after seven years of hectic effort,” Faysal Ahmed Manik told The New Nation with a note of frustration.
He said: “I have submitted all required papers and documents in line with EC’s requirement. Even I have changed my Hindu name in the educational certificates. But it did nothing …I failed to get the NID.”
As his wait for the NID gets longer, finally, Manik sent a legal notice to EC Secretary, NID DG and three other officials asking them to reply within seven days.
Manik said he had fallen in love with Mahmuda in 2002 when they were students of Jagannath University (JnU). He changed his name to Faysal Ahmed Manik from Nanda Kumar Roy in the same year. Two years later they got married.
But problem arose in 2007 when the government launched new voter ID and NID programme with picture. Manik enlisted him in EC’s server with mentioning Islam as his religion but he remained Nanda Kumar Roy as per his certificate.
In 2013 when Bangladesh government made NID mandatory for service, Manik took initiative to change his name.
Later, Manik again took initiative and applied for NID with changing his all documents as per EC’s requirement. After scrutinizing all documents Thana Election Office recommended to give a corrected NID to Manik. But still he is waiting.
Nujhat Irin (not real name), a Bangladeshi expatriate in the United Kingdom applied for her NID correction two years ago fulfilling all requirements of the EC. After a few days of filling the application, a text message was sent to her designated cell phone number saying her application has been accepted by the EC.
Irin came to Bangladesh only to complete the EC’s procedure of getting a corrected NID, as her name was wrongly typed on it and for this she was facing many problems.
But she became worried after EC sent a text massage to her designated cell number on November 11, asking her to submit all documents within 10 days again.
“I had submitted all my papers to local Thana Election Office two years ago when I came to Bangladesh in vacation. I had to struggle several days to submit my papers as the election office was not friendly to service seekers,” she said.
Irin’s effort was succeeded as the officials later accepted her application saying that she will be informed about the progress of correction as soon as possible.
“But, two years later they sent me a SMS asking for more papers again to be submitted in ten days for evaluating the competence of my application,” she said, adding, “How can I meet EC’s requirement right now when I am in London?”
