BNP's Tarique Rahman gets registered as voter in Bangladesh

Dhaka/New Delhi, Dec 28 (PTI) Bangladesh's Election Commission on Sunday approved the inclusion of BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman in the voter list weeks ahead of the February 12 polls.

A day earlier, the 60-year-old leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) visited the Election Commission (EC) office here and provided fingerprints and iris scans for biometric enrollment. He had earlier submitted his voter registration application online.

“The Election Commission has approved the inclusion of Tarique Rahman in the voter list,” Director (Public Relations) and Information Officer of the EC Secretariat Ruhul Amin Mallick told state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS).

Son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, Rahman, and his daughter Zamia completed all necessary procedures for voter registration and the issuance of a National Identity Card (NID) at the EC on Saturday. Now, after inclusion in the voter list, a new NID number will be generated for him and his daughter.

Bangladesh first introduced a voter list with photographs and biometric data in 2008. Rahman, who was a political prisoner then, left for London on September 11, 2008 after his release. As the BNP leader was abroad at the time, he was not included in the voter list.

Rahman will be contesting the February 12 general election from his ancestral Bogura Sadar (Bogura-6) constituency. BNP leaders have already started collecting nomination papers on his behalf since earlier this month.

Ending his self-exile of 17 years, the BNP leader returned to Bangladesh from London on December 25 to take over the reigns of his party even as his mother Khaleda Zia is in “extremely critical” condition at a Dhaka hospital.

Earlier on Saturday, the disbanded Awami League party of Zia's arch rival Sheikh Hasina, whose government was toppled last year after a violent street protest, raised questions on the legality of including Rahman in the voters' list when the final list was already prepared.

Becoming a new voter is legally prohibited after the announcement of the election schedule, it said, and also questioned how the EC functioned on a Saturday, a weekly holiday for the government.

However, former Election Commission official SM Asaduzzaman, who was director of public relations at the EC Secretariat when the photo voter list and NID system were introduced, underlined that the law allows any eligible citizen to be included in the voter list at any time. PTI SKS SKS NPK NPK