BNP's Tarique Rahman registers as Bangladeshi voter after 17 years abroad in self-exile

Dhaka/New Delhi: BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman on Saturday completed the formalities to enlist himself on Bangladesh's voter list and obtain a national identity (NID) card, two days after his return from over 17 years of self-exile in London.

The 60-year-old leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) visited the Election Commission (EC) office in Dhaka under tight security, where he provided fingerprints and iris scans for biometric enrollment, news portal tbsnews.net reported.

He earlier submitted his voter registration application online, officials said.

“Tarique Rahman has already filled out the online form and has come to complete the registration by providing his fingerprints and iris scan,” ASM Humayun Kabir, director general of the National Identity Registration Wing of the Election Commission, told reporters.

He is expected to receive his NID card within 24 hours, the official said.

Rahman's daughter Zaima also completed her registration formalities for the NID card.

Foolproof security arrangements were in place around the EC office premises, with members of the Bangladesh Army, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Ansar and police deployed in and around the area.

According to a report in Bengali daily Prothom Alo, Bangladesh first introduced a voter list with photographs and biometric data in 2008 during the military-backed caretaker government led by Fakhruddin Ahmed that followed the 2007–2008 political crisis.

Rahman, son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, was a political prisoner at that time. After his release from prison, he left for London on September 11, 2008.

As the BNP leader was abroad at the time, he was not included in the voter list, and he did not return to Bangladesh during the subsequent Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League rule to register as a voter.

After the new voter list with photographs was introduced, the EC cancelled the previous voter list.

Former Election Commission official SM Asaduzzaman, who was director of public relations at the EC Secretariat when the photo voter list and NID system were introduced, said Rahman did not sign up as a voter then, news portal bdnews24 reported.

He, however, underlined that the law allows any eligible citizen to be included in the voter list at any time.

Bangladesh is going to the polls on February 12. Rahman will contest the upcoming election from his ancestral Bogura Sadar (Bogura-6) constituency, with BNP leaders already collecting his nomination papers on his behalf earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the Awami League, banned by the interim government from contesting the elections, has raised questions on the legality of including Rahman in the voters' list when the final list has already been prepared.

In an article posted on its website, the party claimed Rahman is "receiving one privilege after another, with repeated violations of the law".

"After the announcement of the election schedule, becoming a new voter is legally prohibited; yet questions have arisen about Tarique Rahman becoming a voter while that schedule was still in effect.

"Moreover, the day was a Saturday, a weekly government holiday. So how was the law followed, and under whose instructions?" it asked.