October 11: The new Citizenship Identity Card is necessary to vote in the election. Without the new identity card, you cannot make the Voter Photo Identity Card and without the Voter Photo Identity Card, you will not be allowed to vote.

Many people are however still in the process of making the new identity card. To expedite the process, the Department of Civil Registration has started issuing the new identity cards in Thimphu.

People who have not been able to go to their dzongkhag to make the identity cards can make them here.

With the election drawing near, there is a huge rush and there are complaints from people that census officials are being biased. They accuse the officials of giving special treatment to some people.

Others however say the officials are working hard to cope with the rush. They say the officials are doing their best to provide the identity cards to everybody on time.

Pema Letho is the senior ICT officer with the Department of civil registration and census. He denied that the officials are giving preference to people they know. He said many people fail to give the correct information and this is delaying the whole process.

The Department of Civil Registration and Census has a fixed a schedule to ease the problem. From 9 am to 11 am the people have to submit the forms. And from 3 pm to 5pm they issue the identity cards.

Right now they are issuing the identity cards for Trashigang dzongkhag. And after that it’s for Trongsa dzongkhag.