Left wandering with NID card, without voter serial number

I first decided not to go to the polling centre as I woke up with the voting in the elections to three city corporations beginning at 8 o’clock in the morning. As the day rolled on, I then came out of my indolence and decided to go to the polling centre. I took my national identity card and left home. It was 10:30am. As I walked down the lane into the main road, I noticed camps of several candidates — mayor, councillor and woman councillor in the reserved seat — helping voters by finding out the voter numbers for them.

I approached a table, with party volunteers busy thumbing through the electoral roll printouts, looking for voter numbers based on the holding numbers of voter addresses. I held out my NID card for one to help me. He looked a bit annoyed. The man, probably hired by the party, blurted out: ‘We can’t do it now. We’re tired and will take rest for some time.’ A man, probably an activist or one working in the election campaign for the candidate, came forward and asked the other man to do the job and he said he was attending to their refreshment such as tea or biscuits. He refused to budge.

I kept standing, noticing what others were doing. The campaign people advised me to text my NID number to certain Grameenphone number and in return it would text me back giving my voter serial number and the polling centre (there are three centres in the station in my area) where I would need to go for voting. But I do not use Grameenphone as my mobile network carrier and I was left hopeless, helpless too. Whiling away some more time there, I went to another camp of another party. A dozen people were trying to help voters standing beside to find out their serial from the electoral roll printout. It was a huge task for them to search for the holding numbers to find out the voter serials from piles of paper.

As I held out my NID card, a campaign leader, who knew me well, said that he could not find the pile of printouts that contained serials of the voters living in my lane. I waited for a few minutes and then sat on a chair kept behind. There was nothing I could do in about 15 minutes in getting to know my voter serial number. I sneaked out and approached a small campaign, of a councillor candidate. Four people — two women and two men who appeared to be much organised from the site of piles of paper laid tidied on the table — were too busy. One of them also there advised me to text my NID to the Grameenphone number. I felt helpless again.

I have the NID card and I should not have faced any problem in casting my vote. As I thought this, I ventured into the centre, in the neighbourhood school. A police officer wanted to know my serial number so that they could direct me to the centre where I would vote. I told them that I did not know my serial number but I had the NID card. It was then for them to feel helpless. One of them said that it was impossible for me to cast my vote without knowing the serial number as the centres and the polling booths were set up based on the serial number of voters of my area.

I left the centre at the sigh of a policeman, who said that one vote was wasted. Coming out on the road, I again went to a campaign camp, of a councillor candidate while the crowd subsided. I held out my NID card in front of a volunteer with a mobile in hand. He texted my number and, after a while, gave me my serial number and the centre number. It was 11:15am by then. I hurried back to the centre and found that I was due to cast my vote at a booth on the second floor of the school building.

As I was walking past the first booth, the presiding officer wanted to know my serial number. But I told him that I have the NID card. He looked blank and said that it was impossible for me to cast my vote without knowing the serial. He then advised me to get the serial from one of the party election camps. I asked him why I should do that. I was given the NID card which registers me as a voter and after that, why I should need any help from the camps. It was for the Election Commission to get me the voter serial. Only one candidate, for the position of the councillor, who visited my house a few days ago sought vote from me. I did not even know who the other councillor candidates were. The fray for the mayoral position had been something you could not remain ignorant of, especially because of news reports, television talk-shows and the processions that had blocked roads for hour in the past few days.

I told the presiding officer that it was the Election Commission which should have got me my voter serial number especially if it wanted me to cast my vote. He argued that the commission had an online system for voters to get to know the numbers. I told him that how could it assume that voters even in the cities all had access to the internet. He then told me that I could get the number by texting my NID number to Grameenphone. I told him that it appeared to be business of a sort; and not all mobile operators were offering the facility. There is no reason to believe that the voters all were using Grameenphone connections.

The helpless presiding officer told me that there was no mechanism for the Election Commission to let voters know the serial numbers even during the national elections. It was true. There was not any. But that is a basic flaw of the electoral process. Voters are registered, given NID cards and are then forgotten, left at the hands of party campaign camps that would help people out. The commission could have asked voters to get the serial numbers from anywhere it wished to — head or camp offices or from the centres the evening before or whatever. Or the voter serial number could have been printed on the NID card or the voters could be distributed to the centres based on the NID serial numbers or even the serial numbers could be sent to voters by post.

But there should have been a way for the voters who have no access to the internet or who do not use mobile, or for all voters, to get to know their voter serial number. But I did cast my vote, eventually, to elect candidates, who are party leaders apparently and officially non-partisan with party weight thrown behind, in a non-partisan election with the help of election campaign camps set up by the parties.

Akkas, Abu Jar M. (2015 Apr. 29) Left wandering with NID card, without voter serial number. New Age. 8

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