UNB, Dhaka :The Election Commission will start the three-phase data collection on July 25 for updating the country’s voter list and providing national identity (NID) card to all citizens born on or before January 1, 2000.Election Commission Secretary Sirazul Islam told this at a press briefing at Media Centre of the EC Secretariat on Thursday. Bangladeshi citizens born on or before January 1, 1998 will be eligible to be voters, while all nationals born on or before January 1, 2000 will be eligible to get NID cards, he said.With this, all young citizens aged from 16-17 years will also get NID cards for the first time next year. But now only the young people aged above 18 (voters) are illegible for the NID cards. However, data collection of eligible people living in enclaves will not be started right now as the land boundary agreement is not implemented yet.”The exchange of enclaves is still unresolved issue. The agreement is not implemented yet. So, we can not enroll inhabitants of enclaves now,” the EC secretary said.”Whenever the agreement is fully implemented, we will make them voters after demarcating the constituencies where the enclaves are situated,” he said. With 2.5 percent growth of the country’s exiting 9.62 crore voters, the commission estimates, some 24 lakh fresh voters will come out during the door-to-door data collection, Sirazul said.Besides, the EC estimates some 48 lakh young citizens aged less than 18 will be registered to get NID cards during the three-phase data collection, scheduled to be completed by September 22 next, he said.The young Bangladeshi nationals, whose data to be collected for providing NID cards, will be registered as voters soon after their ages exceed 18, he added.The eligible people will also have scope to provide their respective data through online registration this year, he mentioned.Enumerators will collect data in 189 upazilas/thana from July 25 to August 9 in the first phase, while 184 upazilas/thana from August 16 to 30 in the second phase and 141 upazilas/thana from September 7 to 22 in the third phase, he said. Some 61,000 manpower including 50,000 enumerators and 10,000 supervisors will be needed for the data collection work, he noted.Photographs and fingerprints of the possible voters will be taken in three phases from August 11 to October 20 through 5,400 possible registration centres across the country.But photographs and fingerprints of the young citizens other than eligible voters will be taken in also three phases from October 22 to February 10 next.
