The way to hide marriage information in NID is being closed

EC officials said that this initiative has been taken following recent incidents of hiding marital information, using fake documents, and complications related to inheritance and pensions.

According to the plan, the Election Commission's database will be linked with the Marriage and Divorce Registration Department. For this, an Application Programming Interface (API) has been requested from the relevant office.

Under the new system, during online NID applications or information corrections, the information from marriage and divorce certificates must be provided in designated fields. As soon as the information is provided, it will be automatically verified from the relevant server. If the information is incorrect, fake, or incomplete, the application will not proceed to the next step. As a result, the opportunity to correct NID information using forged documents will be significantly reduced.

The Election Commission has also taken initiatives to automatically verify not only marital information but also eight other types of information online. For this, APIs have also been requested from the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), the Department of Immigration and Passports, the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, the Secondary and Higher Education Division, the Health Services Division, and the Birth and Death Registration Authority.

Regarding this, EC Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said, to build an accurate NID database, it is necessary to ensure 100% accuracy of information. Currently, many pieces of information have to be verified manually, which is time-consuming. If information can be verified directly from the servers of the relevant institutions, irregularities and forgeries will be significantly reduced.

EC sources said that currently, various types of documents have to be submitted for NID registration, information correction, and voter registration for expatriates. In the future, if this information is automatically verified online step by step, the application process will become easier, faster, and more accurate.

According to the Election Commission, obtaining a National Identity Card with false information is a legally punishable offense. The penalty for this offense includes a maximum of one year's imprisonment and a fine of 20,000 Taka.

Currently, the Election Commission's NID server stores the information of 12 crore 83 lakh 23 thousand 240 citizens.