Abu Taher has been shown as a married woman in his NID and his husband's name is Shafia Khatun! Taher had the error corrected by visiting the municipality.

Like Nilufar and Taher, many other residents of Sreepur municipality are crowding the municipality office to correct numerous errors on their NIDs, which were prepared along with an electoral roll containing the voters' photographs under a pilot project of Election Commission (EC).

Since the draft voter roll has not been made public yet, the locals registered as voters under the pilot project could not check for similar errors on it.

Officials at the local election office said they were still making preparations to make the draft list available for registered voters who would then be able to go over it and request for corrections if they find any errors on it.

The understanding of the locals is that both the NIDs and the electoral roll will contain similar errors since those were prepared at the same time using the same voter information.

"Various mistakes are being detected on the national identity cards and we are helping the card holders have those corrected," said commissioner of ward 2 under Sreepur Municipality, Sheikh Abdul Khaleq, while talking to The Daily Star.

Khaleq, along with eight other ward commissioners of the municipality, has been distributing the NIDs among the locals since last month. Once an error is detected on a card, the ward commissioners are also guiding the cardholder how to have the error corrected.

"We are working on the pilot project since June 10," said Abdul Shahid Sarkar, another commissioner of the municipality. "We receive the applications [for correction] and forward those to local army camp."

During a visit to the Sreepur municipality area, this correspondent came across many locals who were collecting their NIDs from the municipality office while some of them went there to have the errors on their cards corrected.

"I was very delighted to get a national identity card, but I was unhappy to see a serious mistake on my card. That's why I came here to request a correction of the mistake," said Mozammel Haque Manzu, a registered voter, at the municipality office.

On Manzu's NID, his father's name is shown as Abdul Jabbar Amena and mother's name as Khatun. Manzu said his mother's full name is Amena Khatun and her first name was mistakenly added to his father's name.

Another voter on the list, Mostafizur, had to make a trip to the municipality office because his NID mistakenly shows his mother's name as Hamida Begum in place of Majida Mahmud.

Locals speculate that errors on a number of NIDs will go uncorrected since many unaware cardholders will never seek to make corrections on their NIDs. Only the ones that are conscious are now visiting the municipality office to have their cards corrected.

The EC put a tremendous effort implementing the much-hyped pilot project that ran from June 10 to June 30 to gather field-level experience of simultaneously preparing the NIDs and an electoral roll containing photographs.

Since the beginning of the project in the Sreepur municipality area, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda and two election commissioners -- Muhammad Sohul Hussein and Brig Gen (retd) M Sakhawat Hossain -- visited the area on several occasions to monitor progress of the project.

Army Chief General Moeen U Ahmed also visited the area on the day of launching of the project as Bangladesh army provided technical support and human resources for the project.

A massive publicity campaign was launched with the assistance of local administration and public representatives encouraging locals to take the time to be registered as voters and have their photographs taken by going to voter registration centres.

A huge number of locals registered themselves as voters, 42,716 in total, in response to the campaign that publicised 22 advantages, especially government facilities, for the NID cardholders.

The number of total registered voters now stands at 45,923 as more voters turned up and registered themselves in the last couple of weeks. Till July 12, 35,917 NIDs were prepared and delivered to the municipality for distribution.

"My wife works in Dhaka. I made her come to Sreepur twice, so that her name could be registered in the voter list and she could get an ID card," said Reazuddin, a teacher at a local school.

He however said, "I went to the office of the municipality several times, but I cannot collect my wife's ID card."

When asked about this hassle, the local ward commissioners said they started distributing the NIDs from June 16 and they did not receive all NIDs yet. Besides, the cards are to be handed over only to the original owners.

Safikul Islam, election officer of Sreepur upazila, said people were happy to be registered as voters and to receive their IDs.

MORE EXAMPLES OF ERRORS
Delwara Begum's husband's name is late Abdul Motaleb Khan, but the NID shows that her husband's name is Motalo Khan.

Momtaz Begum's father is Akkas Ali, but in the NID, her father's name is Mohammad Mokles.

Mawlana Anwar Hossain's name appears as Mawlana Amir Hossian on the NID.

Razia Sultana's mother's name is Anwara Begum, but her NID says her mother is Manoara Begum.

Mahfoza Begum's name is changed to Firuza Begum on her NID.

Ranuara Begum's husband is Mohammad Arfan Ali, but her card says her husband's name is Arakan Ali.

Name of Masud Reza's mother is Lutfun Nahar, but his ID says his mother's name is Lutfar Nahar.

Farzana Haque's husband on the card is mistakenly showing as Zannatul Ferdous.

Moazzem Hossain's ID says that his father's name is Runa Akhtar.

Rahima's signature appears on Madina Khatun's ID.

Many other errors were also detected on the NIDs including wrong addresses and wrong dates of birth.

Many voters expressed their dissatisfaction over the mistakes and said that they had provided accurate information on the forms prescribed by the enumerators who collected the forms by visiting door-to-door. The voters were even present at voter registration centres during the preparation of the NIDs and the voter roll.

Talking to The Daily Star, Election Commissioner Muhammad Sohul Hussain said some minor mistakes took place due to inefficiency of the enumerators.

The ward commissioners of Sreepur municipality said preparing both the voter roll with photographs and the NIDs at the same time and in a hurry lead to numerous mistakes.

The Sreepur upazila election officer admitted detecting some minor errors and said that the errors were being rectified.

WHAT NEXT
At the concluding ceremony of the pilot project on June 30, CEC ATM Shamsul Huda said the pilot project has successfully put to rest all doubts regarding the feasibility of a voter list with photographs.

According to the EC's earlier announcement, it would finalise the voter list preparing process after evaluating the experiences gathered through the pilot project.

The EC is likely to announce a complete roadmap today for holding the next parliamentary election with a specific date for preparing the voter list with photographs and a tentative date for the polls.

Election Commissioner Sohul Hussain said the EC has evaluated the experiences of the pilot project and ".... we will recruit efficient enumerators to collect details of prospective voters on the prescribed forms."

Former adviser to a previous caretaker government M Hafizuddin Khan told The Daily Star that the EC should revise its original plan for preparing the voter list on the basis of the lessons they have learnt from the pilot project.

"The election commission should drop the plan of preparing the national identity cards along with the voter list. It should focus only on the voter list," Hafizuddin advised.

"It will be a disaster if mistakes are made on a large scale during the countrywide preparation of the voter list," he feared.

About the voter list prepared under the pilot project, EC Sohul said a draft voter list of the pilot project would be published with retrospective effect once the electoral rolls ordinance is amended.

"This list will be finalised after completing legal procedures," he said.