EC set to issue 12m voter ID cards in Oct

KATHMANDU, AUG 23 -
Despite it being a Herculean task, the Election Commission has said it will distribute voter identity cards to the around 12.3 million voters by mid-October.

EC officials, however, also voiced concerns over how they will go about printing such a huge number of cards within the limited time they have, as hardly three months remain for the country to go to the November 19 polls.

The new voter cards will have photos and other personal details of the voters, while this will be the first time the EC will be distributing the ID cards. In the past elections, when citizens did not have the ID cards, the EC used to send ‘invitation’ letters to individual voters, asking them to cast their votes.

EC officials on Thursday said they are formulating a policy on how to hand over the ID cards to each voter at his/her doorstep through the District Election Offices across the country.

The EC is concerned as to how it will ensure that the ID cards fall in the right hands and are not misused during the polls.

“For example, what if a couple (husband and wife) has different political ideologies and s/he hides the IDs provided by the EC with a view to barring his/her partner from voting?” EC officials said in a meeting on Thursday.

Keeping these concerns in mind, EC officials said they will not hand over the cards of anyone who is not present at home to his/her family members.

“We are working to distribute the voter IDs by mid-October and we will hand them over to only those available at their homes. The absentees’ cards will not be handed over to their family members,” Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety told the Post.

The EC has so far registered 12.3 million voters from among the estimated 15.4 million eligible citizens, while over 100,000 more voters are expected to be added in the list after the reopened week-long registration drive ends on Friday.

The EC , meanwhile, said it cannot comply with the request of the High-level Political Committee to extend the voter registration period for one more week. “The term cannot be extended if the polls are to be held in November,” an EC source said.

Labels: News