Why is property ownership a condition for government jobs?

Illustration: TBS

Mission Acharya completed his graduation and post-graduation from Islamic University, passed the written and viva examinations for the government primary school assistant teacher post, and was recommended for appointment on merit.

Yet when 180 of the 182 recommended candidates received their appointment letters, Mission was still waiting. He was left off the list because he had no house.

Mission has lived with his mother in a rented house in Jhenaidah town's Kalabagan area for decades. He did not have a homestead or house in his own name, and the verification process raised questions about his permanent address.

His case eventually reached Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Haque Milan through Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's political assistant Md Rashed Khan, and the minister directed officials to finalise the appointment. 

The education minister asked officials a pointed question, "In which constitution is it written that candidates need a permanent address to get a government job?"

The problem is not new. In 2021, Aspia Islam passed the stages of recruitment for a police constable's post but faced difficulty during verification because her family had no land in Barishal. They had moved there from Bhola after losing their home to river erosion and had lived in the district for around 15 years.

Her case became a national controversy. The government similarly intervened and she got the job, but the episode raised a fundamental question: If a citizen is landless because of river erosion or poverty, are they any less a resident of the place where they have lived for years?

Why does a candidate who has passed every stage of a competitive recruitment process need ministerial intervention to establish where they live? 

The answer points to an entrenched weakness in Bangladesh's permanent-address verification system, which can reduce that question to a much narrower one: Why must the candidate or their family own land or a house there?

A system rooted in colonial legacy 

Sadik Hasan, professor of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka, traces the practice back to colonial rule. The British, he said, ran background checks on natives entering government service to find out whether they were involved in anti-British or Swadeshi movements.

"That same practice continued in the Pakistan period, when the question was whether someone was involved in movements against Pakistan or was an Indian agent. And it continues in Bangladesh today," he said.

"The practice has lasted this long, because its costs have always fallen on ordinary people. Those with power and influence rarely had to face it, so the pressure to change it never built up," Sadik argued.

The fix, he noted, has so far been individual rather than systemic. A case goes viral on social media, the press picks it up, and that one candidate gets a solution. The practice itself stays the same.

Why the system is inefficient 

Former cabinet secretary and adviser to the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government Ali Imam Majumdar points out that many Bangladeshis are born and raised in rented homes, particularly in cities. Their parents may have left their ancestral villages, sold or lost their property, or never owned land at all.

"There are thousands of people whose ancestral homes and permanent addresses no longer really exist in any meaningful sense," he said. "They were born in Dhaka, grew up in rented accommodation, went to school and found jobs here." 

For such citizens, he argued, the state should look at residential history rather than land-ownership. 

"Instead of requiring a permanent address, what matters is where that person has lived over, say, the past five years — which addresses they have lived at and what their particular connection to those addresses has been," he said.

That is particularly relevant in a country where housing insecurity, internal migration, river erosion and rapid urbanisation are changing what a permanent address means.

The irony was striking this week. World Habitat Day was observed on 5 October under the theme "Adequate Housing for All", with the United Nations warning that up to 3.4 billion people worldwide lack adequate housing and more than 1.1 billion live in informal settlements and slums. Yet Bangladesh's administrative system continues to behave as though a citizen's relationship with a locality is best established through a plot of land.

Article 27 of the Constitution establishes equality before the law, while Article 29 guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment and prohibits discrimination on specified grounds, including place of birth.

More importantly, the Birth and Death Registration Rules, 2018, cited in the legal discussions around the Aspia case, define a person's permanent place of residence to include a place where they have lived for at least three years. The rules also specifically recognise people whose permanent address has disappeared because of river erosion or other causes.

This exposes the central conceptual error in the verification process. Permanent residence is a status of residence; property ownership is a status of ownership. One does not necessarily establish the other.

The fix already exists

The government's own logic appears to recognise the question is whether the declared permanent address is genuine, not whether the candidate owns property. Yet officials have repeatedly acknowledged that field-level verification may use ownership of land or a permanent structure as an easy proxy, making a mechanism designed to prevent fraud discriminatory in practice.

There is a legitimate reason for verification. District-based recruitment, particularly for police constables and primary school teachers, requires authorities to ensure candidates actually meet the residence requirement. Officials also worry that false changes of permanent address can be used to manipulate local recruitment.

Sadik Hasan believes the state does not need to build something from scratch to replace the land-based proxy, because the tool is already in every citizen's pocket: the National Identity Card (NID). An NID records two addresses, a permanent address and a voter area, and the latter can be wherever a citizen actually lives. 

"The address in your voter area can serve as your address for verification," he said. "Then there is no need to do anything new. The voter area on your NID becomes your address, and that becomes the basis of verification."

His idea mirrors Ali Imam Majumdar's, where he wants the state to examine where a candidate has lived over time. He believes the government has the technical capacity to rethink the system. 

A candidate's NID, birth registration, educational records, voter information, citizenship certificate, utility records, tenancy history and certification from the local authority can together give a far stronger picture of residence than a single land deed. Bangladesh already has much of the digital infrastructure to use them.

The problem is that administrative habits have not kept pace with social reality. A person can spend their entire life in a rented house, have their NID registered there, attend school there, vote there and build their entire social identity there, all without owning a square foot of land.

"The police will collect information according to whatever system they are instructed to follow. So the issue is really about what information the police should be required to collect," Majumdar said.