People queue up in front of the Malda district magistrate’s office on Thursday to get photographed for voter identity cards. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, March 5: With the election commission announcing that no one would be allowed to cast votes without photo identity cards, the Malda district magistrate held an emergency meeting today with senior officials and all the 15 block development officers in the district.

Chief electoral officer Debasish Sen had sent directives to all the returning officers of the district to complete the work related to the issuing of identity cards by March 10.

Of 18,84,711 voters in the district, 17,40,905 people possess voters’ identity cards. The district authorities have to clear a backlog of 1,43,806 cards. The largest number of people without the cars are in Habibpur, Harishchandrapur and Sujapur Assembly constituencies, a senior official said.

“We had made it clear earlier that it would be an impossible task to hand over identity cards to all voters. More than one lakh people are staying in other states for work. We did send another report to the election commission yesterday, explaining practical problems in issuing identity cards,” the official said.

According to the official, in Habibpur and Harishchandrapur, 15,073 and 16,799 people are yet to receive voters’ identity cards. In Sujapur, 16,730 people are to get the cards.

In Malda and Englishbazar Assembly segments, 11, 476 and 13, 441 people have not yet received the identity cards.

District magistrate Sridhar Ghosh had explained all these points to home secretary Ardhendu Sen and director general of police Anup Bhusan Bhora other than discussing the measures being taken to hold law and order during the elections.

Ghosh held a meeting with senior police officials of the district at the conference hall of the police office this afternoon. Superintendent of police Satyajit Banerjee was present.