Army will be deployed, says?CEC
The Election Commission (EC) plans to conduct the next general election between January 5 and January 15, and announce the schedule in the last week of November, senior officials said on Wednesday. They said the EC will meet President Abdul Hamid in the period between November 17 and November 24 to convey its plan and discuss other issues related to the election.
“The EC will sit with the president to discuss the election schedule and ways to conduct free and fair polls,” a senior official of the EC said.
“The commission wants to conduct the election before January 14, as it is constitutionally bound to complete the polls by January 24,” Commissioner Abu Hafiz told The Independent.
He said the EC wants to complete the voting 10 to 15 days before the deadline to hold the polls in accordance with the constitution.
As per the latest amendment to the Constitution, the 10th national election has to be held between October 24, 2013, and January 24, 2014, without dissolving Parliament. It means the 90 days count-down would start from the announcement date of the election schedule.
However, the EC has started taking preparations to hold the next general elections with steps like gathering field-level information.
The EC secretariat has already sent letters to the education ministry and primary and mass education ministry asking them to complete all examinations before the first week of December.
The EC wants to use schools and other educational institutions as 40,000 voting centres.
UNB adds: Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad on Wednesday said army will be deployed in the next general election as they were engaged in all the previous nine national elections since 1973.
“Not a single general election was held without army since 1973 till the last one held in 2008,” he said. As the huge election is held in one day, it is not possible to hold the election without the army only engaging members of the regular law-enforcement agencies, including police and BGB, he added.
-With The Independent input
