Making the ID a 'must' at polls: The recently concluded Local Government Elections had one salient feature. That was the insistence of the Commissioner of Elections to produce one's National Identity Card at the pooling booth for casting the vote.

This is the first time since 1931 that all eligible voters were requested to carry with them the National Identity Card to the polling booths. If any one was not in possession of a NIC he / she was advised to have some document like the Passport, Driver's licence, Postal ID, Pensioner's ID, Railway Department ID to prove the identity.

The Elections Commissioner also worked out a scheme to make things easy for the public who did not possess an ID. That is, to meet the respective Grama Niladhari of the area and get a special application form, a photograph from the Grama Niladhari accredited photographers in the respective areas and get the photos attested as a valid document. A photographer was to be paid Rs.35 per photo by the Elections Commissioner's Department.

All this means that the Elections Commissioner was serious and keen at the same time to see the implementation of the Elections (Special Provisions) Act 2004 passed by Parliament in 2004 to make it compulsory and mandatory to make eligible voters carry NICs.

This Act was a result of the recommendation made in " The Interim Report of the Select Committee of Parliament on Electoral Reforms" chaired by the then Opposition MP Dinesh Gunawardene, present Minister of Urban Development and Water Resources. One aspect of the Electoral Reforms looked into was the issuance of National Identity Cards and making it compulsory at elections.

Although Political parties supported the Bill in Parliament with certain reservations to make it a law binding on all citizens the UNP and some minority parties insisted that the law should be implemented only after every citizen was issued with the NICs and not before.

It was also agreed that the new law would come into effect after One Year, during which time the Government was expected to see the completion of issuing 300,000 NICs to the people who never had a NIC. That was in July 2004.

But the December 26 tsunami turned things topsy turvy when over 150,000 people claimed that they lost all their valuable documents including NICs. According to the Legal Aid Commission 90 per cent of the tsunami victims numbering 140,000 lost their IDs. This figure was also confirmed by the Police.

This was an unexpected situation making the issue of NICs that much difficult.

New machinery was introduced together with additional staff and Divisional Secretaries were empowered to collect the application forms and send them to the Commissioner General of Registration of Persons. There were also moves to decentralise the issuing of the NICs at District level but this project is yet to get off the ground.

With the announcement of the 2005 Presidential Elections, the issue of making the NIC mandatory came up. It was not implemented due to the fact that the Department had not completed issuing NICs by then.

When it was time for the Local Election in April 2006 despite the fact that the Department had yet to complete the work of issuing NICs, the Commissioner of Elections insisted on making the NIC mandatory at the Local Government Elections. But in the final round of meetings with the Commissioner of Elections the lawmakers requested him not to insist on the NIC.

The Commissioner under the powers vested in him by the 17th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka took steps not to do away with NICs but to provide means of obtaining temporary NICs and also allowed the public to present valid documents at the polling booths to prove their identity, if they did not have the NICs. Thus the officers stationed at the Polling Centres though requesting voters for their IDs, did not insist on this contrary instructions issued earlier.

But with the recently concluded Local Elections a clear message has gone to the voters of the vital need of possessing the NIC at the time of voting. Today the NIC or an ID has become a 'must' at elections time to stop mass scale voter impersonation which had become a common phenomena at recent elections.

Beyond the recent hustings the country had witnessed several elections where mass rigging took place the 1982 Referendum being a glaring instant.

The SLFP Presidential Candidate Hector Kobbekaduwa's vote has already been cast when he arrived at the polling booth. This could have been avoided if the NIC had been mandatory at the time. The need to have a National Identity Card in one's possession became an issue from as far back as 1958 when there was a surge of illegal immigrants commonly referred to as`Kallathonis'. This need was emphasised once more as far back as 1965 by the then Emigration and Immigration Controller W.T.Jayasinghe in his Administrative Report.

Making reference to illicit immigrations to the country he wrote, the only way to prevent such illegal inhabitation was to have an islandwide scheme of Registration of Persons and issue Identity Cards to every citizen.

Subsequently Sri Lanka passed legislation in 1968 to issue NICs to every citizen under the Registration of Persons Act 32 of 1968. The law came into effect in 1971 which made it mandatory for those above 18 years of age to have a NIC. Issuing an Identity Card to their citizens is a normal practice in many countries in the world and having an ID in one's possession helps overcome many hurdles.

On October 7, 1971, the Government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike passed the Registration of Persons (Amended) Bill being the first Legislative Act of the Parliament to have passed since the abolition of the Senate, the Second Chamber. It was sponsored by the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Defence and External Affairs Ministry, Lakshman Jayakody. That bill removed the earlier provision in the original law for finger printing of persons. It was also said that to have more than one ID in one's possession was an offence.

By 1971 there were 6.5 million people over and above age of 18, in need of NICs. The Government announced that all citizens of the age specified should submit applications to obtain National Identity Cards from the respective Grama Niladhari and issuance of IDs took place islandwide in January 1972.

The public could be persuaded to produce NICs for transactions they engage in with state or private sector institutions.

To encourage having an ID in one's possession and drive the idea of its importance, the State could take steps to inculcate this need in the minds of children from their formative years. Hospital authorities could be persuaded to issue temporary IDs at the time of new births as they do with temporary registration cards for children born in hospitals and nursing houses which could be declared valid until such time the children enter schools.

The School heads should be directed to demand parents to submit IDs for children at the time of enrolment and insist on IDs at the Year Five Scholarship Examination. Likewise at the GCE and at higher Examinations they would learn the importance of the ID and in the long run NIC would not become an issue of debate.

Implementing a scheme to give every one a NIC is the burden of the Public Security, Law and Order Ministry.

Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake could take a clue from the former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in organising a scheme to cover the whole island.

He also could use his good offices to motivate the officers in charge to organise mass projects to complete the issuing of NICs at district level to clear the backlog and to introduce a viable system using the District Secretariats to meet the new demands.