The Election Commission (EC) has taken a plan to settle nearly 400,000 pending applications, submitted seeking correction in the national identity cards, within the next three months in a bid to curb the corruption in the NID services.

Director General of the Election Commission’s National Identity Card (NID) Wing ASM Humayun Kabir on Thursday said this while talking to reporters following an operation of Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), conducted at the EC offices, targeting a network of corrupt staff and brokers who allegedly involved in bribery related to NID card services.

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“We’ll try to resolve 3.78 lakh pending applications submitted seeking corrections (in NID) within three months so that the opportunities for corruption are reduced,” he said.

The ACC, in a crackdown started 11am on Thursday, detained two brokers red-handed and took action against two corrupt staff for their involvement in bribery related to EC’s national identity card services.

The NID DG said the manpower crisis is a major reason behind the backlog of applications. So, an initiative has been taken to hire more manpower for the NID services, he said.

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 “I hope you will see a crash program very soon. You will see significant improvement (in settlement of applications) in the next three months,” he said, adding that the EC would try to settle all 378,000 pending applications within this period.

According to the EC’s statistics, there are more than 12 crore voters in the country. A large number of voters have various errors in their NIDs. But the people face harassment and difficulties in availing NID services.