Bangladesh News

The secretary of the Election Commission (EC) Secretariat yesterday expressed concern about the rise of additional voters on the list being prepared through updating the existing one, as people are ‘not cooperating’ with the field level staff in deleting the fake names from the list.
Additional voters might remain in the voter list if the deletion of names of fake voters or dead persons is not done properly, EC Secretary Abdur Rashid Sarkar said, adding, “Fake votes in the election might be cast if the additional voters remain in the list.”

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) MA Aziz on several occasions questioned the accuracy of the existing voter list. In defence of his claim, he quoted a letter of the European Union (EU) sent to the previous CEC, MA Syed and a US State Department report.

The EU letter addressed to the previous CEC had pointed out the existence of as many as 13 million ghost voters, while the US State Department report this year mentioned of 8 per cent fake voters on the existing list prepared in 2000.

The field level staff who are working for updating the voter list in the capital said they are not getting 80 per cent of the people traced to the addresses on the existing list while local people are not interested in providing information for deletion of those names.

“I was informed that the existing voter list shows over 700 voters in Zahurul Haque Hall of Dhaka University. But only one of them was found in his address,” said the EC secretary.

The residential halls of Dhaka University have 9,911 voters in the existing voter list prepared in 2000, sources said. Most of them left the halls by now and new students live there.

CEC MA Aziz on several occasions have said that a good number of voters have been listed in the existing voter list showing Muktangon and Stadium in the capital as addresses, but nobody lives there.

“Those names will be deleted from the list if the assistant officials can certify it,” the EC secretary said.

On May 3 this year, the EC published the draft of a fresh voter list that showed 9.13 crore voters while the existing voter list prepared in 2000 has 7.64 crore voters.

The unusual rise in the number of voters triggered enormous controversy over its accuracy. The draft list was declared illegal by the Supreme Court as the list was prepared ignoring the High Court judgement.

The EC secretary said the finance ministry did not inform him anything on allocation of budget for the task of voter list update till yesterday.

He, however, expressed hope that the ministry will allocate the budget in a day or two.

About the progress of the ongoing task of updating the voter list through door to door visits, the secretary said the progress is on an average over 30 per cent while it is below 30 per cent in the capital.

ELECTION PREPARATIONS
The EC have started preparations for holding the next parliamentary election, the secretary said, adding that the preparation has got slow pace due to various complexities.

“We are planning to purchase 20 thousand new ballot boxes to add to the present number,” he said.

At present there are 1.95 lakh ballot boxes, a senior official said.

The EC secretary, however, rejected the demand for introduction of transparent ballot boxes.