Voter list update starts in metropolises

Star Online Report

Updating the electoral roll with photographs kicked off in the capital and five other metropolises today.
Enumerators of the Election Commission (EC) will make door-to-door visits in the six city corporations -- Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet and Barisal -- till October 5.
The enumerators in the fourth and final stage of the voter list update programme will collect necessary information for registering fresh voters, deletion of names of the dead and transfer of names from one electoral area to another during this timeframe.
On June 15, EC started the nationwide task of voter list updating with photographs, which is scheduled to be completed on or before December 31 this year.
Photographs of fresh voters will be taken at the registration centre of each ward of the respective city corporations, which will start from October 12 and continue till November 10.
If any voter misses the deadline to give photo shots, they will be given seven days to appear before the respective centre to be enrolled as voters.
The enumerators will write down the information on the registration books after collecting it from others if the eligible persons remain absent during information collection process.
No-one would be allowed to get enrolled as a voter if they go to the registration centres and their information is not found on the registration books, sources say.
EC sources say the enumerators will provide a slip to each fresh voter mentioning the date and time when their photographs will be taken. An eligible voter will have to take the slip to the respective registration centre in their ward for giving photo shots and fingerprints.
The EC website says people born on January 1, 1992 or earlier will be eligible to register their names as new voters.
Those who will become voters this year will get national ID cards, the sources add.
The draft voter list is likely to be published in January next year after all objections regarding the voter list are resolved. A final voter list would be published after that.
Names of the listed voters who have died will be deleted from the existing voter list and those who were disqualified will be dropped from the list during the updating process.