Khadimul Islam
The Election Commission is planning to defer the Dhaka City Corporation elections till the end of May or the first week of June, according to an election commissioner.
The commission at a meeting on Tuesday in principle decided to defer the polls as the government is yet to respond to its proposal on the local government polls in April and as the city corporation ordinances promulgated by the interim government were yet to be re-enacted as laws.
The chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, on February 18 told reporters, ‘We want to hold Dhaka City Corporation elections in April. The commission will send a proposal to the local government ministry in this regards.’
‘Considering the overall situation, including HSC examination scheduled between mid-April and mid-May and government’s cold response towards holding the elections in April, we are now planning to defer the elections,’ said an election commissioner. The commissioner, however, refused to talk formally with the media.
The local government and rural development ministry, however, sent a letter to the Election Commission towards the end of January urging it to hold the city corporation elections soon as the polls have been due for a year and a half. The corporation administration served out its five-year tenure on May 14, 2007.
Sources in the EC secretariat said the commission had earlier decided to hold the DCC polls sometime between the Secondary School Certificate and Higher Secondary Certificate examinations without updating the electoral roll or redrawing the ward boundaries.
The commission will hold the polls in accordance with the current electoral roll with photographs, prepared in August 2008. Now the number of voters in wards varies between the lowest 20,000 and the highest 1,00,000, according to the 1993 delimitation. The commission has prepared a list of probable polling centres for the city corporation elections.
The commission on January 14 decided to begin updating the electoral roll after May or June on completion of the polls to the Dhaka City Corporation, the municipalities, and the union councils, the sources said.
The commission, meanwhile, today starts implementing a pilot project to update the electoral roll with photographs prepared for holding the 2008 general elections.
The pilot project will being in Manikganj. The previous pilot project on electronic electoral roll began in Gazipur and the model was replicated across the country.
Under the pilot project conceived as part of the electoral roll programme 2009, the commission has selected four places of the district — Baliati and Fukurhati unions at Saturia and Wards 1 and 2 in the Manikganj municipality.
Commission sources said the commission has already completed the task of collecting necessary information within February 23–28 from the pilot project areas to update the electoral roll.
The chief election commissioner will inaugurate the electoral roll registration programme today at 10:30am on the Baliati union council premises.
Courtesy of www.newagebd.com
