As sad as my older Gen-G family, who are out of the country for their studies, were about not being able to register their names on the voter list in their absence, they are excited again after the government implemented the decision to use the biometric data provided for the national identity card.

Just last year, he was able to register himself in the voter list in five minutes after he submitted his biometrics for the national identity card. Now he will be able to vote directly in the election. After the commendable decision of the government on 26 Kartik, a large section of potential voters will no longer be deprived of voting. 

With the implementation of this decision, the question now arises – is this a permanent decision of the Election Commission? Should the Commission maintain a separate database for the voter list or not? Since the national identity card has become mandatory, can the Election Commission also fully use the same central database? Will it save and utilize resources if a single database is used in an integrated system? And, will it still ensure the voting rights of the common citizen or not? 

Article 246 of the current Constitution of Nepal has entrusted the Election Commission with the task of conducting, supervising, directing and controlling various elections. Under this system, the commission basically carries out all the work related to elections to the federal and provincial parliaments and local bodies, which are directly elected, as per the provisions of the Election Commission Act-2073, the Voters' Roll Act-2073, and the Voters' Roll Regulations-2068. Similarly, Article 84(5) of the Constitution provides that every Nepali citizen who has completed the age of eighteen years has the right to vote.

Among the various federal laws regulating this, according to Section 6 of the Voters' Roll Act-2073, even if a person fulfills all three conditions of being a voter, having a permanent residence in a ward within a constituency, and being a Nepali citizen, that person cannot automatically become a voter, but rather must complete a cumbersome process and register his name in the voter's roll. Due to this, the number of new voter registrations for the elections to be held in Falgun was relatively low. 

Considering this issue, would this have been implemented or not? This cannot be said because the Commission and the concerned bodies do not seem to have made any plans regarding the use of the national identity card data (database) that has been put into operation after spending a lot of resources and means. Since it has been implemented without amending the existing law, there is room for questioning its stability. 

Source of voter roll

The source of voter roll is the ‘biometrics-based voter roll system’ (database) managed by the Election Commission. The biometrics of every voter, i.e., fingerprints and photographs, are recorded in it. Even though it is mandatory to submit citizenship along with the voter roll application, there are still serious errors in the Commission’s records and issued voter ID cards. Since no one is deprived of voting just because of an error, such errors are ignored not only by voters but also by the Commission’s employees themselves. 

The fact that the Commission’s biometrics database is extremely weak has been acknowledged by the Commission itself in its latest (eighteenth) annual report (2081).

There is no interconnection between the software operated by the commission itself, there is a possibility of omission when entering data manually in the central server, the security of the data is not reliable and robust, the latest technology has not been used in the work of compiling, updating and storing the voter list, data can be entered from more than one district of the same voter and the quality of the collected fingerprints is also low, which leads to the problem of duplicate voters' details, the quality of the collected photos and the quality of the four fingerprint details is low, making it difficult to detect and remove duplicates from the voter list.

Thus, there is no doubt that the technical system of the commission is nominal because the main purpose of collecting biometrics to prevent the repetition of a person's details in that system is neglected. And, if a voter wants, he can vote from two places because biometrics are not verified during voting and there is no ability to do so. 

Unjustified voter ID card 

The Voters' Roll Act does not make it mandatory by providing that 'the Commission will provide voter ID cards to voters'. To clarify this further, on 2079.01.28, the Commission issued a notice and directed the election officers to 'make arrangements to allow voters whose names are included in the final voter list to vote not only on the basis of citizenship certificate or national identity card or passport but also on the basis of land ownership certificate instead of voter ID cards'.

Raising questions on the Commission in this regard, the Sixtieth Annual Report of the Auditor General - 2079 has commented that 'the provision that voter ID cards are not mandatory for voting does not seem to justify the expenditure on printing voter ID cards'. To provide further convenience to voters, the Commission had made arrangements for the Ilam and Bajhang by-elections held in 2081 Baisakh. Permanent Account No. Identity card or original proof of driving license would be sufficient. 

It seems that the Commission is using a lot of resources and means to compile and update the voter list by keeping a nominal database for the voter list and identity card. Meanwhile, the Commission's Fourth Five-Year Strategic Plan 2081/82 - 85/86 estimates that Rs. 30 million will be spent on printing voter ID cards alone. A voter ID card that is derived from data that is incomplete, inaccurate and does not meet quality standards and is not used as evidence or useful for other purposes (except for special legal provisions, which have not been specified yet) is unreasonable and it is necessary to find an alternative source of the list. The question arises - how long will the Commission be dragged along with such useless, outdated and weak technology? Is there no way to solve this? 

Alternative National Identity Card

With the aim of establishing the digital identity of individuals by collecting basic details related to the identity of a citizen in a centralized and integrated manner, including biometrics, the National Identity Card is being issued under the management of the 'National Identity Card and Registration Department' under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The government has launched an ambitious plan to distribute national identity cards to every citizen, replacing citizenship certificates with a single government-issued identity card. Efforts have been made to ensure uniformity in official documents by making them technology-friendly, along with important public services such as banking, passports, driving licenses, and immigration services, and this has been successful.

The Government of Nepal, through its 2066/067 Annual Policy and Program and Budget Statement, has made provision for all Nepali citizens to use biometric smart cards with photos as national identity cards that can be used even in ‘elections’. The National Identity Card and Registration Department was established in Asoj 2075 and its distribution began in Mangsir 2075. According to current statistics, nearly two-thirds of Nepal’s population, or 19 million, has registered its details, 7.4 million cards have been printed, and more than 3.5 million have been distributed. Although the entire card has not been distributed, there is no obstacle to using the number received by those registered. 

Since then, the Election Commission seems to be struggling a lot to compile and update the list using incomplete and outdated technology and to make it error-free. Therefore, detailed biometrics including fingerprints, irises and photographs based on state-of-the-art technology of globally recognized standards that have been maintained at a national level are considered to be very strong, powerful, simple, standard and pure data. The Election Commission also considers the National Identity Card database as the basic source and creates the voter list from it. 

Question on the independence of the Commission

Since the Election Commission has been doing all the work related to voter list management since before, a law was also formulated accordingly. However, now the Election Commission should be ready to change its path in this matter and move towards providing stability to the path it has recently adopted. The National Identity Card is not guided, targeted and inspired by any political philosophy.

There is no doubt or prejudice in its autonomy. And, no political party can use the National Identity Card for its own interests. Therefore, there is no harm in the Election Commission independently accessing this data and using it as a voter list as it is now. Rather, it would be better to use that data by concluding a data sharing agreement between the Election Commission and the Ministry of Home Affairs and amending the Act and Regulations as necessary and move forward. This will respect the adult suffrage guaranteed in the Constitution. 

Needless to say, our legal system and law-making system are inspired by our closest neighboring country, India. If we look at the constitutional provisions of the work, duties and powers of the Election Commission, both countries are almost the same - 'to conduct, supervise, direct and control elections'. Based on this, in India, the Election Commission has been authorized to independently maintain a separate voter list and to keep separate data for this.

The same can be explained in Nepal too, but one should not forget the fact that there is a fundamental difference between Nepal and India in terms of granting citizenship. While Nepal has a very robust system in place to identify only Nepalis, and now also distribute national identity cards, there is no single government certificate of citizenship like ours that identifies them as Indian citizens.

Instead, to prove nationality, recourse is taken to Aadhaar card, passport, voter ID card, permanent account number, birth certificate, driving license, etc., as most of these documents are provided to non-Indians besides citizens. Therefore, since it is not possible to create a voter list based on government data, the Election Commission there is forced to manage the voter list itself. 

If we look at the practice of other countries in South Asia, only in Nepal, India and Bangladesh do the Election Commission maintain its own database and create the voter list. In Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives and Bhutan, the voter list is generated from a national or central database. Moreover, in Bangladesh, the Election Commission manages the database of both the national identity card and voter ID card. In the US and the UK, the commission itself does not maintain and manage the database. Therefore, rather than saying which system is wrong and which is right, it is appropriate to create a system that is suitable for your country and suits your soil so that the autonomy of the Election Commission is not compromised. 

Epilogue

When reviewing the national approach so far, it seems that the Ministry of Home Affairs has planned to adopt the National Identity Card only as an identification document for election purposes. However, the Election Commission, in its latest annual report-2081, the review of the completion of the Third Five-Year Strategic Plan last year, and the drafting of the Fourth Five-Year Plan, and in the bill to amend and consolidate the election-related laws, also plans to strengthen its own database.

The latest report of the Accountant General-2082 has suggested that ‘the process of updating the voter list should be automated by matching it with the software used for incident registration and national identity cards.’ However, both the bodies have not officially thought about or discussed the issue of using integrated data. Therefore, all these should be amended. 

If the Commission is to maintain its database for the voter list, it will have to raise resources equivalent to the national identity cards, which does not seem practically possible. It is difficult for a poor country like Nepal to bear the burden of double expenditure for the same work. Therefore, using a single database for the voter list and the national identity card is the best solution. And, it is necessary to provide legal stability to the currently implemented system.

Instead of maintaining separate data, the Election Commission should simply record the data on areas such as disability, language, group, class, education that are not covered by the national identity card as is currently done during online pre-enrollment. Since the main data is updated from the event registration under registration, the commission does not have to keep updating it regularly and does not have to print voter identity cards. Instead, if its resources are mobilized in voter and election education, voter access to elections can further increase.