Bangladesh News

The Election Commission (EC) is not being able to start publishing draft voter lists with photographs since the law ministry has yet to clear the way for promulgating the electoral rolls rules.

The EC on January 21 sent a draft of the rules to the law ministry for vetting, requesting the ministry to take necessary steps as soon as possible, but the ministry had yet to return the draft to the commission till yesterday, sources said.

Officials in the EC Secretariat said they communicated with the law ministry last week to know the status of the draft that had been with the ministry for over a week, prompting responses from the ministry officials that they would complete the vetting this week.

Once the contents of the draft electoral rolls rules is thoroughly scrutinised, the EC will make it into a law, exercising a power which was vested upon it in August last.

After promulgating the rules, the EC will initiate the process of publishing area wise drafts of voter lists seeking claims and objections from registered and prospective voters.

According to the EC’s electoral roadmap announced on July 15 of last year, publication of draft electoral rolls was supposed to begin in October of the same year, two months into the beginning of the field level work of preparing the voter lists with photographs, but the commission could not maintain the self declared timeline.

Now, the EC wants to start the publication of draft lists quickly for four city corporations and seven municipalities to start holding long over due polls to local government bodies.

The army, which has been working at field levels to prepare the voter lists with photographs, handed over to the EC on February 5 the draft voter lists for the four city corporations and seven municipalities for publishing.

The EC has decided to announce by mid-March the schedules of polls to the city corporations of Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal and Sylhet, and to the municipalities of Shariatpur, Sitakunda, Cox’s Bazar, Golapganj, Sripur, Fulbaria, and Manikganj.

According to the EC’s decision, preparations for holding polls to local government bodies must be completed by March 20, but it will be difficult to complete the work within the timeframe if the commission cannot begin publishing the draft voter lists for the areas this week, the sources said.

It will require a month from the date of publication of the draft voter lists to complete the process of finalising those. Entertaining the claims and objections from registered and prospective voters will require at least 15 days. If they find any mistake, they will file objections within that time. Then the revising authorities who will be appointed by the EC will settle the claims and the objections in the next 15 days, officials in the EC Secretariat said.

Once the process is completed, the EC will make final voter lists for the four city corporations and seven municipalities, and print those. It will need another 15 days or more to finish printing the final lists.

Publication of draft voter lists for other areas will also follow.

EC OVERCOMES DIFFICULTIES
Meanwhile the EC is overcoming the difficulties caused by glitches in its fingerprint scanners which slowed down the field level work of voter listing in many areas.

The commission already purchased 2,000 additional scanners to expedite the process of voter listing, and the company which supplied those also replaced another 2,000 malfunctioning ones.

Technical glitches were detected in around 5,000 finger print scanners, making the EC worried and prompting it to initiate an all out effort to resolve the problem, the sources said.

During its talk with leaders of professionals’ organisations on Thursday, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda disclosed that the EC had faced some problems in voter listing due to malfunctioning fingerprint scanners. He however said the supplier was replacing 5,000 faulty ones.

A senior official, who has been working in the project of preparing the voter lists with photographs, said they had detected glitches in some fingerprint scanners over the past few months. “We’re now overcoming the problem,” he added.