Polls in 5 cities from May 23 to June 29

The polls in Barishal, Gazipur, Khulna, Rajshahi, and Sylhet city corporations will be held between May 23 and June 29 using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), said the Election Commission yesterday.

The polls will be held in three phases, said Jahangir Alam, secretary to the Election Commission Secretariat, after a meeting of the election commissioners at the Nirbachan Bhaban in the capital's Agargaon.

The meeting was presided over by Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal.

A top official of the commission said the EC was considering holding Gazipur city polls on May 25 in the first phase. The second and third phases of the polls will be held on June 10 and June 22.

Talking to journalists, Jahangir also said that the preliminary discussions on elections in Gazipur, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal and Khulna were held at the commissioners' meeting.

The schedules would be announced in mid-April, he said.

EVMs will be used at all five city elections. Besides, the EC has plans to install CCTV cameras at voting centres, he said, adding that the final decision is yet to be made regarding the installation of the cameras.

The EC is legally obliged to hold an election for a city corporation within 180 days of the corporation's five-year tenure.

The EC will have to hold Gazipur City Corporation polls between March 11 and September 10, Khulna City Corporation and Rajshahi City Corporation polls between April 13 and October 10, Barishal City Corporation polls between May 14 and November 13, and Sylhet City Corporation polls between May 6 and November 5.

Awami League leaders Talukder Abdul Khaleque was elected mayor of Khulna city on May 15, 2018, and Zahangir Alam of Gazipur city on June 26, 2018.

AL leaders AHM Khairuzzaman Liton and Serniabat Sadiq Abdullah and BNP leader Ariful Haque Chowdhury were elected mayors of Rajshahi, Barishal and Sylhet cities respectively. All three elections were held on July 30, 2018.

Meanwhile, Jahangir said, the commission will finalise the decision regarding how many EVMs will be used in how many parliamentary seats depending on government financing for repairing 1.1 lakh EVMs.

The EC sought money from the finance ministry in late February to repair the machines.

The EC has bought 1.5 lakh EVMs in phases since 2018 at Tk 2.35 lakh each, almost 11 times the price available in India.

Now, around five years later, 40,000 of those machines are beyond repair while the rest 1.1 lakh can be fixed but that requires around Tk 1,260 crore, according to a proposal from Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory (BMTF) placed before the election commission in late February.