No dual NIDs, Bangladesh’s database now fully secure: EC

ASM Humayun Kabir, Director General of the Election Commission’s NID Wing; briefing reporters

No one in the country has currently dual national identity cards and the NID database is now fully secure, said ASM Humayun Kabir, Director General of the Election Commission’s NID Wing, on Monday.

"We have finally identified 586 people with two NIDs…. we’ve activated their first NID cancelling the second ones,” he said while briefing reporters at Nirbachan Bhaban in the capital.

He said their both NIDs were locked but their original ones have been activated and they can now access all citizen services.

The NID DG said the Commission had made the decision to address the dual NID issue in the first week of this month and the problem was resolved within two weeks. “At this moment, to our knowledge, no one has more than one NID. If any future cases are identified, we will take the same action,” he said.

The EC’s NID database contains information of over 125 million nationals. There were incidents of data leak from the data server in the past.

About the data security, Humayun Kabir assured that all necessary measures have been taken to prevent any information leaks under the current circumstances.

He said the data center operates round the clock. Sometimes, it was shut down briefly for maintenance—as did last Saturday for four hours.

The EC regularly inspects the system to ensure everything is running properly and updated, he added.

“We’ve taken all necessary initiatives from our end. At this moment, our data center is completely secure. There is no existing challenge regarding its security,” said the NID Director General.

He said the daily operation of the data center continues by ensuring that no data leakage or damage occurs under any circumstances.

Humayun Kabir also said all possible measures will be taken to keep the database safe in future as well.