Voter listing 3 weeks ahead of schedule

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The Election Commission (EC) yesterday reached the halfway mark to finishing the mammoth job of voter listing by already registering four crore electors, three weeks ahead of schedule.

According to the EC’s plan, another four crore voters will be registered in the next four months, estimating that the number of voters is likely not to exceed eight crore. The number was 9.30 crore on the previous list prepared in 2006, which was scrapped due to a large number of duplications and other errors on it.

If everything goes according to the electoral roadmap announced by the EC on July 15 of last year, then the voter list with photographs is likely to be ready by the end of October this year with a view to holding the stalled ninth parliamentary election before the year end.

Satisfied by the progress in the work of preparing the voter list, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has been assisting the EC in the job, is preparing to celebrate the achievement on Sunday, sources said.

Civil and military bureaucrats involved in the job, and officials of different foreign missions in Dhaka are being invited to the celebration, from where the EC is expected to announce the progress in its preparations for holding the parliamentary election by the year end, the sources added.

The national voter list with photographs has been being prepared by the EC under the auspices of a UNDP project titled ‘Preparation of Electoral Roll with Photographs’ (PERP) since last year, at an estimated cost of TK 424 crore with TK 274 crore of it coming from contributions made by different foreign donor agencies and countries.

According to the electoral roadmap, the field level work of voter registration is supposed to be completed by the end of coming June.

On area wise completion of field level voter registration work, the EC has already started publishing draft voter lists for the respective areas, seeking complaints and claims from already registered and overlooked prospective voters to finalise the lists.

The EC has a plan to begin next month the final round of field level work of voter listing, with a confident hope of completing the job in June, since it already succeeded in registering four crore voters three weeks ahead of schedule, the sources said.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda over the last few days has been assuring the political parties participating in the electoral reform talks with the EC, that the field level work of voter listing will be completed on schedule.

The EC kicked off the field level voter listing job in August of last year on a limited scale and at full throttle from November. Over the last few months, the EC has completed the voter listing job on offshore islands and in remote areas.

“We will begin the final round of work in areas more or less adjacent to the cities, and we believe, that work will proceed much faster than the pace of the previous rounds of the job,” the CEC said on Tuesday during a day-long electoral reform talks with political parties.

Simultaneously another crucial work of selecting spots for polling stations also reached almost the halfway mark to completion, the sources said.

“So, once the field level work of voter listing is completed, selection of spots for polling stations will also be completed soon after it,” said a senior official of the EC Secretariat.

In November last year, the EC started the work of selecting spots for polling stations for the upcoming national and local government elections with help from the army, although the existing system empowers returning officers for doing the job.

According to the EC’s decision, field level election officials have already begun selecting prospective spots for polling stations in their areas on completion of voter listings there.

The field level election officials have also been sending to the EC, lists of prospective spots for polling stations since January of this year, with approvals from the army representatives involved in the job in respective areas.

According to existing electoral laws, however, the list of polling stations is supposed to be finalised after the announcement of election schedules.

But for this year’s elections, the EC will finalise the list of polling stations long before the announcement of poll schedules to avoid the usual controversies that surround the process of preparing the list, since it is usually made public through an official gazette notification only a couple of weeks ahead of the polling day, leaving the candidates with no chance to dispute the choices.

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