The zonal election offices and law enforcement agencies have identified 428 out of 582 polling centres in Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal and Sylhet City Corporations as “vulnerable”.
In a paper prepared by the Election Commission (EC), based on information supplied by these agencies, it noted that “Rajshahi is the den of ‘Sibir-Jamaat’ and Khulna is a city that is dominated by the ‘terrorists’, so the Election Commission should take special measures to ensure free, fair and participatory elections there.” “In Rajshahi about 443, in Khulna about 450, in Barisal about 434 and in Sylhet about 418 Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel would be respectively deployed along with other strike forces in four city corporations from June 13 onwards to maintain law and order,” the paper said.
The paper also sounded a note of caution about the situation at Rajshahi University, saying that since the university would be open before the election, the activities of the regular police and mobile teams would have to be strengthened to maintain the law and order situation.
The paper said the law enforcement agencies should take special measures to stop the activities of extremist parties in Khulna area. “The Sarbahara and other extremist forces have now surfaced, so we should be more alert,” the paper said.
According to the EC directives, the electoral campaign should end 48 hours before polling starts at 8:00am on June 15, and any sort of campaign activity after that would be considered a violation of the electoral code of conduct.
However, candidates and campaigners have been seen violating the code of conduct. Candidates for the mayoral, councillor and women’s reserved councillor posts have been doing everything to draw public attention. They are holding rallies in different areas and making pre-poll pledges to woo voters, locals said.
The commission decided on Monday to deploy Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) in Rajshahi, Khulna and Sylhet and the Coast Guard in Barisal to maintain the law and order situation during the upcoming city corporation polls.
Election commissioner Md Shah Nawaz told reporters that the EC has decided to deploy Coast Guard personnel in Barisal City Corporation area. “We will deploy the BGB in the other three city corporation areas. We had kept the BGB as a reserve force for maintaining law and order during these city corporation elections.”
To ensure free and fair polls, the EC was conducting training programmes for the candidates and election officials in the city corporation areas. Election officials have organised mock voting through electronic voting machines (EVM) at different centres in city corporation areas.
The EC secretariat said the law enforcement agencies have set up a number of checkpoints in different parts of the cities recently. Police, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Ansar personnel will be deployed during the election to ensure peaceful voting in accordance with the suggestions of the agencies.
-With The Independent input
