THE High Court has asked the Election Commission and a number of government authorities that include the Local Government Division and the Office of the Registrar General, Birth and Death Registration, to establish the number of the Rohingyas that have been registered as voters and the issuance of other documents such as birth certificates, national identity cards and passports to them and report back by August 8. The police find 49 Rohngyas to have obtained, as New Age reported on June 12, Bangladeshi passports with birth certificates obtained from the Dhaka North City Corporation with forged addresses. The same High Court bench earlier asked the deputy commissioner of Cox’s Bazar to investigate how many Rohingyas have been given Bangladeshi citizenship and enrolled as voters in the district and report back by June 6. The court also asked the government to drop 370 Rohingyas from the electoral roll of Eidgaon union in Cox’s Bazar district headquarters. The Anti-Corruption Commission has earlier, as New Age reported on June 11, initiated investigation of the forgery of passports and national identity cards that two brothers of a former army chief have obtained using aliases and falsifying information.

All this shows that the procedures applied to the issuance of birth certificates, national identity cards and passports are not, deplorably, fail-safe. The Office of the Registrar General, Birth and Death Registration, is reported to have notified the north city authorities on June 5 that it suspended the birth certificates, primarily issued in 2022–2023, of the 49 Rohingyas on a request of the Special Branch and the agency is conducting an investigation to establish what exactly happened in the case. But the investigation is taking place after the documents have been issued through forgery. The agencies involved in the process, therefore, cannot shrug off their responsibility just by suspending the documents and by carrying out an investigation to establish what has happened in the cases. An investigation appears also in order against the agencies. But all this has brought to the fore the fact that the three documents of national importance — the birth certificate, the national identity card and the passport — can be forged, almost always with the help of the officials or public representatives involved in the process. The government should, therefore, look into the precariousness of the procedures applied to the issuance of the birth certificate, the national identity card and the passport, rework the process, if needed, and ensure that no one, inside or outside the government and the process, can tamper with the procedure. Everything that needs to be done should be done by adhering to the due process.

Whilst the government, therefore, has issues to mend to bolster the process to head off forgery of any kind, it must also carry out investigation against the agencies and the officials working there who are involved in the forgery and hold them to justice if they are found guilty in a credible investigation. But whilst the government does this, it must make the procedures fail-safe but not an issue of harassment of the rightful claimants to such documents.