But the new caretaker government already asked the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) to probe into the Tk 140 crore Voter Identity Card scam, which had begun by the end of BNP's 1991-96 rule and ended during Awami League's (AL) 1996-2001 regime.

One of the strongest voices in the anti-corruption and good governance campaign in the country, Prof Muzaffer Ahmed, however believes that there should be a probe into the spending for the flawed list as well.

While declaring the state of emergency on January 11, President Iajuddin Ahmed in his speech told the nation, "The pre-requisite for a free and fair election is making of a flawless voter list before the electoral process starts. Constitutionally this responsibility lies with the Election Commission. When the voter list was being corrected and updated for the upcoming election, it was found to be full of various types of mistakes and its acceptability became questionable."

Iajuddin added that the harsh reality is that holding of the election within the 90-day timeframe since the dissolution of the last parliament in addition to creating a flawless voter list within the same period will not be possible.

The president's speech prompted the people to expect a flawless voter list from the caretaker government as well as identification and punishment of those responsible for making the current flawed list.

"If an investigation finds out that the flawed voter list was the result of someone's inefficiency, then the responsible should be made to pay from their own pockets for the wastage they had imposed on the nation," Prof Muzaffer Ahmed said.

Law Adviser Barrister Mainul Hosein on the other hand told The Daily Star, "So far we have not thought of finding and punishing the persons responsible for the flawed list. Rather we are emphasising on a flawless voter list. We have already talked to the Election Commission in this regard."

"But it was discussed at the advisory council meeting that the Election Commission had previously wasted Tk 140 crore in the name of introducing voters' ID cards. Where did this money go? The council decided to ask the ACC to investigate the matter," Hosein pointed out.

"Afterwards, I called up the ACC chairman over the phone and asked him to start an inquiry," he added.

Meanwhile, ACC Chairman Justice Sultan Hossain Khan admitted of having the phone conversation and said they will formally launch an inquiry into the matter after receiving a letter from the government in this regard.

Asked whether the anti-graft commission will launch an inquiry into the flawed voter list prepared by the EC while MA Aziz had been in the office as its chief and the process of which continued even after acting Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Mahfuzur Rahman took over the charge, the ACC chairman did not make any concrete comment but said an inquiry can be initiated even later.

The EC under the leadership of MA Aziz spent over Tk 100 crore in preparing the flawed voter list. In the process Aziz even fought with the finance ministry for allocation and disbursement of fund while totally ignoring press reports on how the list was becoming flawed.

Aziz also ignored the demands of opposition parties. Awami League was demanding that the voter list of 2000 be updated, instead of preparing a fresh one, to keep it above controversy.

The EC produced voter list's partisan and flawed nature became crystal clear when the commission fought against the High Court (HC) on the issue of updating the list. The HC finally issued a ruling that the EC should update the voter list created in 2000. But the EC ignored the ruling for nearly two weeks on the pretext of not receiving the order and started preparing the flawed list on January 1, 2006.

But the EC did not stop there. It went to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court and filed an appeal against the HC verdict, which it lost.

Meanwhile, Aziz gave rise to a crisis within the EC as the decision of creating a fresh voter list had been taken by him unilaterally ignoring other election commissioners.

After Aziz had gone on a leave and Mahfuzur Rahman took over as the acting CEC, he also refrained from publishing the draft voter list before and even after the announcement of the now defunct election schedule making the whole thing even more suspicious.

Foreign poll observers like National Democratic Institute (NDI) found gross flaws on the list. NDI detected 13 percent error margin on the list, which is far too high to be acceptable.

The voters' ID card project that the caretaker government asked the ACC to inquire into had been actually launched on January 1, 1995 during a BNP regime that had taken office in 1991.

The project was kept suspended for a year after an AL government had come to power in 1996. It restarted in mid-1997 and ended in June 2000.

EC sources said about four crore ID cards were issued under the project.

Interestingly, they never said whether the ID cards are valid.