EC for legal action if Rohingyas registered as voter

Election Commission has instructed its field-level officials to take legal action against those who will attempt to enrol Rohingyas in the fresh voter list ahead of the next general election.

The commission has instructed field-level officials to sue public representatives in Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati and Bandarban if they help Rohingyas to be registered as voter, the EC’s acting secretary Helaluddin Ahmed told The Daily Star.

There are allegations that the Rohingya refugees, feeling from Myanmar, are somehow collecting fake birth certificates and national ID cards from local public representatives to be registered as voters, he added.

Apart from these, the local public representatives are “hatching illegal efforts and putting pressure” on the field-level election officers in Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban to register the Rohingyas as voter, he said.

The Election Commission has already held meeting with field-level officials of many upazilas of the districts and given them a strict instruction to prevent the enrollment of Rohingyas in the voter list upgrading process, he added.

The Election Commission will send letters to the Local Government Division in the respective areas to convey the necessary messages to the public representatives in a bid to resist Rohingyas’ enrollment in the voter list, he added.