DHAKA: Some 15 election commission officials sacked earlier for various offensive activities were found involved in the National Identity (NID) card forgery.
Brigadier General Saidul Islam, director general of the Election Commission's National Identity Registration Division (NID), said this at a press conference at conference room of the Nirbachon Bhabhan on Monday (September 23).
During the presentation of voter information server for about two hours, the NID DG said, "Our main server is fully protected. Many claimed that the Rohingya voters are included in the main server of EC. But there is no chance to access the EC's main server before January 24. Because, according to the law - the draft list was published on January 1 before the data was entered into the main server. The matter was then settled on the objection. And after January 24, it is again verified and included in the main server. So in the ongoing NID process, the Rohingya have entered the Temporary Server. We have identified as 61 people”.
Brigadier Saidul said, "We were able to catch a vested quarter by setting up a trap. That is what we call ‘ambush’ in the military. Joynal, an employee of our Double mooring Election office, was first identified. Then others have been identified. This number will not exceed 15 people. I'm not telling you the actual figure for the sake of investigation. I'm not saying which levels of officers are involved. We can't find two involved persons because their names are already in the media”.
He said that most of those involved in the attempts were earlier sacked from the EC. They worked on various EC projects. We have already told all our Upazila Officers and those who supply our manpower - that the former officials should not be involved in the voter list.
At the press conference, Muhammad Ashraf Hossain, system manager of EC, said, "We have changed the password of all the officials so that none can add Rohingyas to the Temporary Server in the future. Besides, we have arranged one time password (OTP) message for access to the server. In addition, fingerprints have been included to entry to the server.
"Our Special Investigation Committee was able to make contact with one of 61 Rohingyas who got NID through ongoing forgery," said Abdul Baten, director (operations) of the NID Division of EC.
Based on the information given by him, we have got the involvement of one of our employees, he added.
Earlier on September 22, counter terrorism unit of Chattogram Metropolitan Police detained four Election Commission (EC) employees in a case filed over providing NID cards to Rohingyas.
BDST: 1652 HRS, SEP 23, 2019
RS/SMS
