Mohiuddin Alamgir

The Election Commission plans to empower the election officials to allow up to 1 percent of the voters in a polling booth to cast votes through EVMs if their fingerprints don’t match with biometrics data stored in the EC server.

Twenty-seven Awami League-backed chairman candidates have been elected to zila parishads uncontested, which was six more than the number of unopposed winners in 2016 polls.

The Election Commission yesterday finalised Tk 8,711 crore project for purchasing two lakh electronic voting machines and their management.

Unveiling its work plan for the 12th national polls, the Election Commission yesterday said that gaining the trust of the political parties is a major challenge.

Without any piloting, the government is rolling out the new curriculum at the primary level as the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) officials failed to prepare the teachers’ guide on time.

The prices of stationery items and study materials have gone up significantly over the past two months, putting thousands of guardians, already struggling to cope with surging prices of essentials, in a tight corner.

After missing the target of eradicating adult illiteracy by 2014, the government is now planning to make everyone able to read and write and vocationally upskilled by 2030.

The Election Commission is going to buy two lakh Electronic Voting Machines for the next national polls, spending more than 10 times what India paid to obtain its EVMs.

Mahbub Talukdar, who, as an election commissioner, raised a lone voice against the ills within the election commission till his retirement, died at a city hospital yesterday.

The Election Commission has decided to use EVMs in up to 150 parliamentary seats in the next general election though major opposition political parties still have no confidence in the voting machine.

The Election Commission is going to use electronic voting machines in the next parliamentary polls when almost all major opposition political parties are dead set against it.

Ignoring many of the major recommendations put forward by political parties during the recently held talks, the Election Commission has proposed amendments to electoral law.

While the Covid-19 pandemic took a toll on almost every sphere of life, one of the heaviest blows was to female secondary school students in the country.

When Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana returned to the then West German city of Karlsruhe on August 18, 1975, they were still in the dark about the full scale of the tragedy that befell their family in Bangladesh.

Brig Gen (retd) M Sakhawat Hussain is an author, analyst and a former election commissioner. Recently he has talked to Mohiuddin Alamgir of The Daily Star on different issues including electoral reforms and proposals placed by political parties during the EC talks.

From a staggered national election to a proportional representation system -- the Election Commission has been flooded with a whopping number of proposals placed by 28 political parties on the electoral reforms during the recently concluded dialogue.

Differences of opinion on the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the next national polls are widening among political parties with almost half of the registered ones opposed to electronic voting.

Nearly half of the 39 registered political parties are in favour of a polls-time government under interim, caretaker or all-party system for ensuring a participatory and credible parliamentary election. 

Nine opposition political parties, including the BNP, have  skipped the ongoing talks with the Election Commission, saying that they have no confidence that the commission would be able to hold a free, fair and participatory national polls.

The BNP yesterday skipped Election Commission’s dialogue seeking recommendations of political parties on how to hold a free and fair general election.