Bangladesh News

The secretary of the Election Commission (EC) Secretariat yesterday slammed some of the election observers for not following properly the policy and guidelines on polls observation.
“There are some organisations who engage school and college students to observe elections. Some of them don’t even submit observation reports to the Election Commission. Sometimes they issue statements that could unbalance the situation during the election time,” Abdur Rashid Sarkar, the EC secretary, told reporters yesterday.

He, however, did not name any of the election observers’ bodies. “It’s my observations in general,” he added.

In accordance with the policy and guidelines formulated by the EC for election observers no one can be appointed an observer unless they are eligible for contesting an election and their age will be minimum 25 years.

About the alliance of 35 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) launching a platform styled Election Working Group (EWG) on last Thursday, he said they have yet to be informed of such developments.

Neutrality of some election observers of the alliance has come into question when they have yet to begin the task of monitoring the next general election.

“The Election Commission will decide on who will be appointed election observers and for that the time is not ripe yet,” the secretary said.

Abdur Rashid said, “The issue of election observers will be discussed on completion of the ongoing voter list update. I will suggest that the commission strictly follow the policy and guidelines in granting permission to observe elections.”

“The policy and guidelines for election observation should be amended, if need be,” the secretary added.

About the ongoing voter list revision, he said as of last Saturday, over 1.46 crore people have applied for being registered as voters while 19.52 lakh applications received seek deletion of names from the existing voter list.

The task of updating the voter list by visiting from door to door will continue till August 20.

The EC Secretariat sits with the senior officials of the Dhaka City Corporation today to expedite the task in the capital.

The secretary yesterday clarified that the updated voter list will be kept open for public inspection for three days from August 25.