The Election Commission (EC) yesterday decided to hold the long overdue elections of the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and municipalities by December and union parishad polls between January and February next year.
Considering school examinations, Eid-ul-Azha and Hajj, the EC will hold the elections for DCC and municipalities within December, Chief Election Commissioner ATM Shamsul Huda told reporters at the EC secretariat after a meeting.
If the EC can move with the plans, a series of elections are expected to take place between December and February, allowing people to elect their new representatives for the local government bodies, EC officials said.
A senior EC official said they have already completed the preparations for the DCC polls.
The tenure of the present DCC mayor expired in May 2007, but the election remained suspended due to the state of emergency at that time and other complications afterwards.
Similarly, the tenure of mayors and councillors of over 270 municipalities expired in early 2009 while that of chairmen and councillors of over 4,300 union parishads in early 2008.
But the EC could not hold the polls in absence of a precise law and other reasons.
The government introduced new laws relating to municipalities and union parishads at the end of the last year. But some provisions of the laws regarding redrawing boundaries of the wards under the two local government bodies made it difficult for the EC to go for the polls.
The EC feared that social disorder might occur after redrawing the boundaries of the municipalities and the union parishads in line with the laws.
In response to the EC’s request, the government moved to amend the laws, dropping the provisions and keeping population difference more or less 10 percent from one ward to another.
LGRD and Cooperatives Minister Syed Ashraful Islam yesterday placed a bill in parliament to amend the municipality act by cancelling the provision of redrawing the boundaries of the wards under the municipalities, and keeping the population difference about 10 percent.
Another bill is likely to be placed to amend the law concerning union parishads.
