Election Commission will definitely abide by govt directives: EC secretary
The Election Commission (EC) is bound to follow the directives and decisions made by the government, says the commission's Secretary Md Jahangir Alam.
He made the statement while addressing the press on the topic of the draft National Identification Registration Bill, 2023, at the EC building in Dhaka on Tuesday (13 June).
He said that EC has a constitutional responsibility, within which providing NIDs was not included.
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According to the law, the commission has been assigned various other responsibilities and in line with this, when the comprehensive voter list was compiled in 2008, nearly 80 million voters' information was collected from the extensive voter list, and from there the NID distribution process began.
The responsibility for this was assigned to the EC, he said adding that the government had assigned the task of issuing NIDs to the commission via a law and that authorities are now amending the same law and assigning the responsibility to someone else.
"The EC has no comment on this matter. The commission will definitely abide by the government's decision," he furthered. Responding to a question, he said that the commission is yet to be briefed about the new law in detail.
Earlier on Monday (12 June), the cabinet gave the final approval to the draft National Identification Registration Bill, 2023, in a move to shift the NID services under the home affairs ministry from the EC and introduce a unique number for each citizen.
The EC currently conducts the national identity registration operation and has been issuing NIDs against citizens aged 18 or above, since 2007, as per the National Identity Registration Act, 2010.
