HC questions EC’s data collection of under 18 citizens

The High Court today questioned the legality of the Election Commission's move to collect information about the people, who have not attained the age of 18 years, as part of updating voter list.

Responding to a writ petition, the court issued a rule asking the EC authorities to explain in 10 days as to why the decision should not be declared illegal as per Section 11 of the Voter List Act 2009 and Rule 27 of Voter-list Rules 2012.

The chief election commissioner and secretary to the EC have been made respondents to the rule.

The HC bench of Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and Justice Md Ashraful Kamal came up with the rule after hearing a writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer ZI Khan Panna challenging the legality of the EC's decision.

The EC on July 24 started electoral roll updating programme and the commission-appointed enumerators are supposed to visit door to door to collect data of citizens.

The commission for the first time decided to collect data of citizens aged 15 to above. Earlier, data of the citizens of 18-years or above were collected. 

But only those, who have completed 18, will be included in the electoral roll. Date of those citizens, who were born on or before January 1, 2000 will be collected. But only those, who were born on or before January 1, 1998, will be registered in the electoral roll.

EC officials say data of below 18 citizens will be collected in advance to process their personal information for preparing national identity (NID) cards.

Petitioner's lawyer Shahdeen Malik today told The Daily Star that the HC questioned the legality of inclusion of names of people, who have not attained the age of 18 years, as part of activities of updating voter-list for violating section 11 of the Voter List Act 2009 and Rule 27 of Voter-list Rules 2012.

During the hearing, he told the court that updating voter-list means inclusion of those who attained the age of 18 years in the previous years.

Articles 119 and 122 of the constitution and the Voter-list Act 2009 limit the power of the EC to include information of only those who attained the age of 18 years, he said.

Shahdeen Malik argued that EC in concerned with only voters not with minors and the EC must update the voter-list annually or every year, and hence, they cannot update the list in advance by including those are minors.           

Deputy Attorney General Motaher Hossain Sazu opposed the writ petition, saying that the EC is not making the people under 18 voters in any manner by collecting information about them.

The EC is doing a preparatory work as part of updating the voter-list, he said.