EC Urges Swift Biometric Data Update Amid Voter Complaints

Despite distribution of smart national ID cards at the field level, many voters in Bangladesh are facing difficulties due to their biometric data not being updated in the Election Commission’s (EC) central server. The issue has become particularly problematic for those who submitted their biometrics a second time but are still not fully registered in the system, notably with fingerprints of all ten fingers missing from the server.

To resolve this matter promptly, the EC has instructed field-level officials to take immediate action. In a recent directive, EC Secretary Akhtar Ahmed urged the system manager, regional election officers, and district election officers to expedite the update process. The directive stated: “Biometric data of those voters who have provided it a second time during smartcard collection must be updated without delay. District election officers must regularly coordinate with the system manager (technical) on this matter.”

Currently, Bangladesh has an estimated 121.8 million registered voters. Of these, around 70 million have received smartcards. However, the EC has now ordered that biometric data—particularly fingerprint information—of these cardholders be uploaded to the server without further delay.

According to sources, during a recent monthly coordination meeting of the Election Commission, Sylhet Regional Election Officer Mohammad Nurul Alam highlighted the issue, stating, “Even though smartcards have been distributed at the field level, biometric data of many voters has not been uploaded to the server, leading to widespread inconvenience.”

In response, the meeting resolved to accelerate the process of updating the biometric data of affected voters.

As per the latest update, the total number of registered voters in the country stands at 123,732,274. Among them, 69,149,349 have received smartcards, while 52,708,11 remain outside the scope of this service.