It is as though an alien is applying for citizenship right in a foreign land, out to prove his continuous residence in a country with all sorts of documents one can conceivably think of. The election commission has asked its own people intending to register as voters "to submit receipts of municipal tax or house rent or payment to local guards, and affidavit on age or attested copy of SSC certificate with their applications in prescribed form." This extraordinary design is being contrived as a substitute for going house-to-house to ascertain the voters' bona fides. Now, to be enfranchised he is having to go to district or upazila election offices, get a form, rummage through all his papers or have them from various sources and then at the end of a long winded process walk back into the election offices to submit his fat file.

It is almost certain many people wouldn't like to take the trouble. All that the voters had earlier needed was to fill out a simple form handed to them by enumerators. So, the arrangement being envisaged now is actually discriminatory against a very large number of voters. To be a voter is my constitutional right and a statutory body such as the election commission has been constituted solely with the intent to facilitate my exercise of that valuable right. Is the EC facilitating or debilitating?

Our well-formed impression is that by his conduct of affairs the CEC has lost the last remnants of public confidence in him and his office. He has not only failed to produce an authentic and credible voter list by now or signs of it, he has also trifled with the judgement of his judicial peers. And it is only after the Supreme Court verdict that he apparently relented, but just; his egotistical detours continue. His credentials as a judge were said to be good, but now he has lost public confidence which is why we implore him with all modesty that he relinquish his charge as CEC for the good of the nation.