Election Commission Senior Secretary Md Akhtar Ahmed has announced that the roadmap for the 13th National Parliament elections will be published this week, and that there is currently no reason for concern regarding the law-and-order situation during the election preparations.
Speaking to journalists outside his office at the Election Commission building in Agargaon on Monday, the EC secretary said, “Maintaining law and order during elections is a matter for later. I don’t think there’s any reasonable cause for concern at this moment. We are currently organising our preparation efforts. Once everyone gets their respective areas in order, things will be fine. Currently, we are focused on election management.”
Regarding coordination with field administration officials, he said, “We are discussing how coordination will work with the responsible officials in field administration. We need to determine focal persons from our side. A meeting is currently underway about preparing circulars and related documents. We are trying to coordinate so we can complete these tasks ahead of schedule.”
On constituency delimitation, he said, “Regarding the objections received about 83 constituencies, we will start hearings from August 24 and will continue for four days, after which we will finalise the matter.”
About today’s monthly coordination meeting, he said, “We tried to understand the status of NID corrections. Applications that were rejected for correction are being resubmitted. What we find unacceptable may seem correct to applicants. They have the right to appeal, which we will process accordingly. Currently, there are about 80,000 such cases. I believe this number is decreasing significantly and we hope if data entry improves, the number will reduce further. There may still be objections and requests for changes. This is an ongoing process, but we can reduce the numbers.”
Regarding polling centre policies discussed in today’s meeting, he said, “We have said the number of polling centres will not increase. Not increasing doesn’t mean keeping exactly what existed before. There may be reasonable increases. If we consider voter turnout without increasing centres, we might be able to adjust. For example, currently, we have booths for 500 male voters per centre – if we can increase this to 600, we might accommodate more.”
On political party registration, he said, “Field teams have been sent to collect information about 22 parties that passed preliminary screening. Parties whose applications were rejected or deemed ineligible are being notified by letter. This time we will clearly state why their applications couldn’t be considered due to unmet conditions.”
Responding to a question, Akhtar Ahmed said, “As I’ve told you before, we want to complete tasks in advance for everyone’s convenience. This gives us better space. If we have to do everything at the last moment in haste, it becomes difficult. If we can do things earlier, our coordination will be better. If I can complete tomorrow’s work today, I might get some extra time or work more comfortably tomorrow.”