Smart NID for all voters by Dec 2018

As part of its plan to complete providing smart NID cards to all voters by December next year, the Election Commission will go for a massive scale-distribution in 32 districts in the first week of next month.

The EC, which is already distributing the NIDs in some city corporation areas, would also hand over laminated cards to new voters for a temporary period as the identification has become essential for any sort of documentation.

The commission has also taken an initiative to purchase 2,000 sets of finger print machines and 2,000 more Image Recognition Intelligence Software (IRIS) scanners. Once those machines are received, the cards would be distributed across the country in a smoother way.

“We are working and taking support from the armed forces division for the smooth personalisation of the NID cards," Election Commissioner Brig Gen (retd) Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury told The Daily Star yesterday.

"For the distribution, we have already procured 517 sets of IRIS scanners and the same number of fingerprint machines."