Those injured in the Gen-G movement, who have been in the hospital for two months and are receiving treatment, were worried that they would miss out on voter registration! But even their worries have disappeared since Thursday.

Now the voter roll is registered based on the 'biometrics' data of the national identity card. There is no need to visit the office for this. It has become easier for citizens after the Registration Department provided the Election Commission with the biometric details filled in for the national identity card.

Finance Minister Rameshwor Khanal started this work by visiting the hospital beds of two injured Prakash Bohora and Mukesh Awasthi, who are undergoing treatment at the National Trauma Center, on Thursday and filling out the form for their voter identity cards. They were happy that they would now receive the voter identity cards via email on time based on the 'biometric' data. The injured Bohora told Finance Minister Khanal, 'The government can do whatever it wants. Now, arrangements have to be made for the youth who are outside to vote.'

Finance Minister Khanal praised the efforts of Gen-G leaders for completing the work so quickly. ‘This work was completed in a single day today due to the efforts of Gen-G friends. Our bureaucracy had made the system very difficult. Gen-G friends could have done it in a single day, in a single minute,’ Khanal said.

This decision was taken at a meeting between the officials of the Commission and the officials of the Registration Department at Singha Durbar on Wednesday afternoon at the initiative of Prime Minister Sushila Karki. Immediately after the Prime Minister’s decision, the employees of the National Identity Card and Registration Department and the Information Technology Branch of the Commission worked day and night.

How was it possible?

To make this possible, Gen-G leader Bhawana Raut, artist Rabindra Singh Baniya, the Election Commission and the IT team employees of the National Identity Card and Registration Department worked day and night. After Gen-G leader Raut was told by her friends from Jhapa about the hardships they had to face in making voter ID cards, she was motivated to find a new option.

‘Earlier, there was biometrics in Damak. This time, we had to go to Bhadrapur because it was broken. Many friends told us that we had to travel for two-three hours.’ If biometrics were so difficult in Jhapa, she wondered what was happening in the villages in the Himalayas. One day, she also inquired about voter ID cards with the injured of the Gen-G movement. They said, ‘We have to give biometrics. That is not possible.’

Raut raised this issue in a discussion with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Communications at the Prime Minister’s Office to ensure that they would not be deprived of their voting rights. But when no initiative was seen, she complained on November 9 through the social network Facebook, ‘There are only 7 days left to make voter cards.’ It has been a month since I started shouting to make the process easier. In Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur, service recipients have been stopped by showing full quota. I'm afraid to even imagine what the condition of the servers in the villages must be like.''

She held the Election Commission and the government responsible and expressed her dissatisfaction over depriving the youth of the right to vote. Then artist Rabindra Singh Baniya joined her. They reached the Election Commission and discussed the matter. Together with the IT team of the Election Commission and the National Identity Card and Registration Department, they set out to make it possible. 'This team worked until one or two in the night,' says Raut. They also resolved the technical, administrative and legal problems that arose during the work in coordination with the Prime Minister's Office.

When artist Baniya discussed the matter with Sumana Shrestha, Sumana also showed its possibility from a legal perspective. Nepal Gazette Part 3, Section 30, Sub-section 9 states, ‘Notwithstanding anything written elsewhere in this rule, the details requested by the Election Commission for the purpose of updating the voter roll may be provided through electronic means (online system).’

Baniya says that he reached the Election Commission with the idea that it could be done if it was to show readiness. They also held a meeting with the commissioner at the commission.

According to Yogesh Aryal, IET Director of the Election Commission, their team discussed how to provide the data through the national identity card. ‘On Sunday, NIED employees and officials arrived at the commission. After an in-depth discussion in the commission, it was decided that the data could be provided to the Election Commission from NID in the form of an API request,’ he said. ‘The commission tried to obtain the data from NID through the system currently in operation so that the people do not have to go to the district election office to provide biometrics and stand in line.’

They started the work with the IT team of NID by creating a flow chart. 'After that, we worked day and night. We created a new website. The work was completed on Wednesday morning. Testing was still to be done. We completed that by Thursday afternoon,' he said. According to him, the form for registration can be filled within 5 minutes. 'We did the work that would have taken us three to four months in three days. We still have to work on some parts of it,' he said.

The team of IT Director Aryal, NID's computer officer Ram Thapa, IT Director Lokraj Sharma and others completed this work.