The Election Commission (EC) has completed all preparations for organizing local government elections. The election festivities will begin with union parishad (UP) voting in six or seven phases this coming November. The commission also plans to hold elections for the four remaining local government bodies — municipalities, upazila parishads, city corporations and zila parishads — in stages afterward.
EC sources say the commission has nearly finished preparations to announce the schedule for union parishad elections. It plans to announce the schedule on Sept. 15, with voting for the first phase to take place in late November. Voting across all phases could be completed by the end of next year.
Earlier, on Aug. 2, the Local Government Ministry sent a letter to the EC instructing it to take the necessary steps to hold union parishad elections. After receiving this government directive, the EC began formal election preparations.
There are a total of 4,581 union parishads in the country. Of these, the terms of 3,981 union parishads will expire or become eligible for election this year — those whose elections were held in 2021 and 2022. The rest will become eligible around 2027 and 2028. Plans are underway to hold voting in phases across all eligible unions. The law requires that a general election be organized within 180 days of a union parishad’s term expiring.
EC officials say the commission is planning something similar to the last seven-phase union parishad election. In the first phase of that election, held in two parts on June 21 and Sept. 20, 2021, voting took place in a total of 367 unions across four districts of Barishal division as well as Rangpur, Bogura, Khulna and Bagerhat. The EC is considering starting this year’s schedule with these same unions in the first phase as well.
On this, Election Commissioner Abdur Rahmanel Masud told reporters the EC has full readiness for the local government elections. “We are moving ahead with Sept. 15 for the schedule and November for the start of voting. We are also in contact with the government on this,” he said.
Asked how many phases the union parishad election would have, he said it would largely follow the number of phases used previously. He said elections will not be held in any union parishad where there is a pending court case or boundary-demarcation dispute.
Signaling the Sept. 15 schedule announcement, another election commissioner, Anwarul Islam Sarkar, said the EC plans to hold the union parishad election in six or seven phases.
The EC’s preparations
As part of the final stage of its preparations for the local government elections, the EC is finalizing reforms to laws, rules and codes of conduct. Last month, the EC finalized drafts of the Local Government Election Act and separate codes of conduct for the five local government institutions and sent them to the Law Ministry for vetting. Once approved, they will be published as gazettes.
The voter list for the local government elections has also been finalized. The country has a total of 128,777,643 registered voters. The EC has set Sept. 7 as the deadline for voter-transfer applications and Sept. 10 for resolving them, after which the voter list will go to print.
The EC has also already prepared a list of possible polling stations nationwide. The number of polling stations for the local elections could be two to three thousand more than for the Feb. 12 national parliamentary election and referendum. A total of 42,761 centers were used for the Feb. 12 vote. But since there won’t be the complication of two votes happening together this time, the EC plans to have roughly one polling station for every 2,000 voters on average.
The EC has already sent instructions to relevant ministries to complete educational institutions’ annual and other exams before November, or as quickly as possible. This is meant to allow school buildings to be used as polling stations and teachers to serve as election officials.
To keep law and order under control during voting, the EC has completed meetings with the heads of the three relevant forces — police, BGB, and Ansar and VDP. During a meeting with the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) A.M.M. Nasir Uddin requested a report on the nationwide law-and-order situation. The law-and-order plan will be finalized after receiving this report. The EC does not plan to deploy the army to maintain law and order for this local government election.
Transparent ballot boxes and voting materials needed for the parliamentary election had already been stockpiled, and these will be used in the local elections. The EC also purchased materials for the local government elections alongside those for the parliamentary election, so that some local government bodies’ elections could be held quickly after the parliamentary vote, since the procurement process for election materials takes several months.
EC sources say that before the parliamentary election, the commission purchased 115,000 pieces each of small hosiery bags and gunny bags, 75,000 large hosiery bags, 1.75 million marking seals and 840,000 official seals, along with other election materials. These materials have been stockpiled for the local elections.
On the overall preparations for the local government elections, EC Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed told reporters last Monday that the commission’s preparations are in their final stage, with the goal of holding local elections in November. The schedule could be announced at any time.