Election Commissioner Md Shah Nawaz on Thursday said inconsistency in the total number of the country’s voters is not a factual error; it might be due to clerical or technical mistakes. A team coordinated by additional secretary (Sirajul Islam) of the Election Commission secretariat is currently examining whether there is any inconsistency in the country’s electoral rolls, he told reporters at his EC Secretariat office following some media reports published today. “We came to know through media that there is anomaly of five lakh voters. Hence we are examining it,” Shah Nawaz said. The media reports say that total number of the country’s voters is 9,14,93,319 according to the statistics of 300 constituencies, which were sent by field-level officials, whereas the voter server of the EC secretariat shows the number as 9,19,48,224. The Election Commissioner said the problem came in the sending process of voter numbers by field-level election officials as voters of some areas might not have been included. “Since the voters are added to the voter server after examining their fingerprints, there is no scope of having any factual anomaly in the number of voters. So, the number of voters is factually correct.” He hoped that the reason behind inconsistency will come out within a day or two. Meanwhile,, a press release of the commission sent by EC director (public relations) SM Asaduzzaman Arzoo on Thursday claimed that the voter number does not remain the same as the registration of new voters is an ongoing process and the commission always register fresh voters and exclude names of dead persons from the electoral rolls. There is no scope of any anomaly in the voter statistics of the commission as the advanced technologies are being used in the voter registration process, it said. Since photograph and fingerprint of each voter are taken and identified during the voter registration, there is also no scope of having duplication of voters, the EC release added. – UNB
