Husband\\\'s name to go from new smart NID cards

The Election Commission (EC) has finalised a sample of highly secure smart national identity (NID) card for eligible citizens, reports UNB.

A decision has been taken to not include the husband's name in the card for women citizens. Presently, married women have the name of their husbands in the laminated NID cards printed on normal paper that creates problems for them in case of divorce.

"Name of husband will not remain as visible data in the smart NID card as women having name of husbands in the NID cards face problems in case of separation," Mohsin Ali, Director General (in-charge) of the National Identity Registration Wing of the Election Commission.

The commission has recently taken the decision as a significant number of married women have applied to the commission to change or omit husband's names from the NID cards in the last couple of years, he told the news agency.

Mr Ali, however, said information on their spouses will be contained in the NID server, alongside 44 other bits of data, for all the citizens.

According to media reports, the divorce rate has risen sharply in recent years, with 23 divorce petitions filed a day on average in 2013 in the capital alone.

Of them, the number of women filing for divorce is higher than the number of men, as per records of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) and Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC).

The two city corporations received 8,191 divorce petitions in 2013 and 7,653 in 2012.