Election commission to pilot Photo-ID project

Good. As a technologist, I am irritated when people sit in their air-conditioned offices and say a field-work intestive project like this would take X years and Y crore taka to complete based on some assumptions and guesswork. There is noting like an actual experiement to identify the issues, timeframes and budgets.

The Election Commission (EC) has now decided to launch a pilot project to
study the feasibility of its much-talked project for simultaneously preparing a
voter list with photographs and national identity cards before holding the next
parliamentary election. The pilot project, to be run on experimental basis, will
start within a month in a remote rural and an urban area to assess the time
limit and the constraints to implementing the EC's mega voter list project at an
estimated cost of Tk 400 crore in next 18 months, EC sources said. "The Election
Commission decided on Saturday to launch a pilot project, but we did not
identify the areas where the pilot projects will be implemented," Election
commissioner Sahul Hossain said yesterday. "Through this pilot project, possible
difficulties will also be identified to avert those in implementing the voter
list project," he added.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda in a press briefing
on Thursday said the EC decided to simultaneously prepare a voter list with
photographs and national identity cards in next 18 months. He also said no
election will be held in next 18 months, which is the 'minimum time' required to
implement the voter list project.

The CEC's statement triggered debates regarding the time for preparing
the voter list to hold the stalled ninth parliamentary election. Talking to
reporters at his office yesterday, Election Commissioner Brig Gen (retd) M
Sakhawat Hossain said it is not possible to implement the voter list project in
less than 18 months. About the pilot project, the election commissioner
said the EC has planned to launch the pilot project at the end of this month or
early in May. "A tentative timeframe for implementing the voter list project and
possible difficulties will be identified in this process," he said.

Meanwhile a delegation of Bangladesh Army on Saturday morning made a
multimedia presentation at the EC Secretariat conference room on the process of
implementing the voter list project. "Experts of Bangladesh Army will provide
all sorts of technological assistance and build public opinion for the task. The
Election Commission officials will prepare the voter list," Election
Commissioner Sakhawat said.

The CEC on last Thursday however said the army would be given
responsibilities to implement the massive voter list scheme. Referring to the
army' presentation, Election Commissioner Sahul Hossain said, "They showed how
the project would be implemented. It may require 10 minutes to prepare an
identity card after taking one's photograph."

Required number of committees will be formed comprising army personnel,
chairmen and members of union parishads and nearest contestants of last election
to the bodies. They will visit door to door with digital cameras and other
instruments to simultaneously prepare voter list with photographs and national
identity cards, Election Commissioner Sakhawat said.
The identity cards
would contain a set of information about the cardholders, he added.