Although the BNP demanded the election in six months, CEC Nasiruddin said that updating the voter list will take six months
Published : 19 Jan 2025, 12:53 PM
The Election Commission has been working towards holding the 13th general election in the timeframe announced by the chief advisor, said Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasiruddin.
“We’re focusing on the timeframe announced by the honourable chief advisor and working towards it,” he told the media at an event on Sunday.
The event was organised for the United Nations Development Programme, or UNDP, to hand the EC technical equipment needed to update the voter lists at the event.
In his speech to the nation on the occasion of the Victory Day, Chief Advisor Prof Muhammad Yunus presented an idea of the tentative schedule of the upcoming election.
He said the election timing would depend on reforms done based on the political consensus before holding the election. In bullet points, the 13th general election is likely to be held in one to one-and-half years, according to the chief advisor.
Meanwhile, the BNP said on Jan 14 that they wanted the parliamentary election to be held in July to August this year.
When asked, the CEC said, “We don’t want to comment on political statements. We’ll follow the law, rules and the system.”
“All we want is that everyone (can contest the election); we want to give a free and fair game and that all players can play under the rules of the game. We want to create such an environment.”
The EC will begin to collect information from door to door on Jan 20 to update the voter lists and it will continue until Feb 3. The programme will kick off centrally at an event in Savar on Monday.
The UNDP sent a ‘needs assessment’ team for the update work, the CEC said after the commission received the necessary equipment. “They gave us laptops, cameras, scanners and bags (175 laptops, 200 scanners, and 4,300 bags),” he said.
“A workforce of 65,000 will be engaged in the task. We’re grateful to the UNDP for the support. We may seek their support in the election process and hope they’ll comply. This is just the beginning and will continue.”
Although the BNP demanded the election in six months, CEC Nasiruddin said that the voter list update will need six months.
“We planned it for six months. There could be a little deviation but the target is to finish it in six months.”
The update is likely to include 1.9 million fresh voters, the EC officials believe.