Bangla Press Desk: The Election Commission (EC) has decentralised the process of settling certain applications for correcting dates of birth on national identity cards.
In a directive issued on Thursday, the commission’s National Identity Wing (NIDW) said that field-level officials will now be allowed to carry out the corrections, provided the changes are supported by education certificates that can be verified online.
Applications based on Junior School Certificate (JSC), Secondary School Certificate (SSC) or equivalent certificates will be classified as category “Ka” cases and can be settled by Upazila/Thana election officer, senior district/district election officer, or assistant director, deputy director or director of the NID Wing.
The commission had announced the move after a meeting on Jul 21.
EC Secretary Akhtar Ahmed had said the correction of dates of birth was previously handled centrally, but the authority would be delegated to field offices for cases backed by public examination certificates.
Officials must follow the existing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) when accepting other supporting evidence or documents alongside education certificates.
They must also record a mandatory note in the Case Management System (CMS) when electronically approving or rejecting a correction request.
Regional election officers and additional regional election officers will monitor work completed by officials under them.
They must randomly check at least three applications settled by each authorised officer every month to verify that they were properly processed.
The officers must prepare reports using the prescribed format and send them to the internal account of the director (operations).
The commission said applications for birth date corrections based on certificates from the Bangladesh Open University, as well as applications seeking complete changes to a person's name, birth date and parents’ names, must be settled at the director general level.
It bars a second correction to the same field for birth date, own name and parents' names once already changed.
The commission has instructed officials to take the steps in line with these directions.
