Voter lists of 200 upazilas by July

Trackback URL

Download PDF

Voter lists in around 200 upazilas will be ready in July third week, facilitating the Election Commission (EC) plan to announce poll schedule for upazila parishads in the first phase.

The EC plans to hold the long overdue polls to upazila parishads in phases before the parliamentary elections. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda on Sunday also said the commission would announce the schedule in a month.

The commission will take a decision on appropriate time to announce the schedule, Election Commissioner Muhammed Sohul Hussain told The Daily Star over telephone yesterday.

“It’s been decided that we’ll hold upazila elections before the parliamentary polls. The schedule might be announced in a month,” Sohul said.

Once announced, polls to around 200 out of 482 upazila parishads might be held in late August or early September, senior officials of the EC Secretariat said.

Until yesterday, printing of the final voter lists for 90 upazilas were completed. By the third week of July, the number will increase to 200 upazilas as printing has been expedited with field level registration being almost over, say officials engaged in voter registration.

Voter lists with photographs for another 130 upazilas are expected to be complete by mid-August, a senior official said. The entire task is likely to be completed in the end of September or early October, he added.

If the commission wants it can hold second phase of upazila elections in October, the official added.

The EC has however yet to decide how many upazila parishads will go through polls in the first phase, sources say.

Election Commissioner Sohul Hussain however said the commission will finalise names of the upazilas where polls will be held in first phase. “We’ll try to hold elections to as many upazilas as possible,” he added.

Highly placed sources in the caretaker government administration hint that elections to all upazilas, which were last held in 1990, might be completed before the parliamentary polls scheduled for December third week.

In line with the directives, the EC Secretariat has started taking preparations for the polls. It will send directives to field level election officials in a couple of days to prepare polling stations.

Senior EC officials estimate that about 50,000 polling stations would be required, sources say.

The officials at the secretariat have already started preliminary tasks for drafting the election rules and the code of conduct.

After the final approval of the council of advisers, the Upazila Parishad Ordinance is now lying with the President’s secretariat.

Once President Iajuddin Ahmed promulgates the ordinance making it law, EC will soon complete promulgation of the election rules and the code of conduct for upazila parishads, the sources add.

PROGRESS OF VOTER LISTING
About 7.95 crore voters were registered with photographs until June 21 completing 99 percent of the total task. The EC estimates that the number of voters will be a little more than 8 crore.

Currently, field level registration is on in 48 places and will end by this month, wrapping up the mammoth task of registration.

Until yesterday, printing of draft voter lists was completed for 297 out of 528 areas, which is 55 percent of the total task.

Besides, final voter lists for 101 areas were printed, which is 18 percent of the total printing task, the sources add.

Leave a Reply