EC plans smartcards for voters

Voters in Bangladesh can now hope to dump their old laminated national identity (NID) cards for new multi-use ‘smart cards’. The Election Commission (EC) says it is planning to issue them free-of-cost by the end of this year. The present NID cards have the owners’ names, their parents’ names, dates of birth, and ID numbers on one side and the residential addresses on the other. The EC and the World Bank had reached an agreement two years ago on the production and distribution of the new cards. But the EC blames the delay in rolling them out on legal complications. It plans to invite tender and place orders for their printing after a legal framework is put in place. “We plan to distribute in phases the new ID cards resembling smartcards by October this year,” EC’s acting Secretary Md Sirajul Islam told bdnews24.com. If the October deadline is missed somehow, the Commission will then start the process in early 2015.