EC to publish updated draft electoral roll on January 15

The Election Commission will publish the draft of an updated voter list on January 15.

According to a letter sent to all election officers at local level on Monday, the date has been delayed 13 days from the usual date of January 2 for publishing the voter list.

The letter signed by Assistant Secretary of Election Commissioner Md Mosharraf Hossain, said the upazila level election officers will publish the voter list of respective areas on January 15.

The decision of renewing the voter list was taken immediately after Kazi Habibul Awal was appointed as Chief Election Commissioner on February 26 this year.

After 2019, the updating of voters’ lists began this year by collecting information from every house for three weeks. Inclusion of new voters, exclusion of deceased and transferring those who changed location was done during the process.

Information of those who were born before January 1, 2007, and are eligible to become voters was collected.

After that photo, fingerprint and iris identification information were collected at designated registration centers.

After resolving the objections about the draft list the final list will be published in March next year and the enlisted voters will be eligible to vote for 12th parliamentary election.

Currently there are 11,32,87,010 voters in the country and of them 5,76,89,529 are men 5,55,97,027 women and 454 are transgender.

The commission might announce the schedule of by-elections to the parliamentary seats that fell vacant after resignation of BNP MPs on Thursday, Election Commissioner Md Alamgir has said. He said this while talking to journalists at the Election Commission office at Agargaon on Monday.

“We’ve received the gazette announcing the seats left by BNP MPs to be empty. We’ll soon hold a meeting where we’ll decide when to hold the by-polls,” said Alamgir.

On December 11, five out of seven BNP members of the parliament (MPs) submitted their resignation to Speaker of the Parliament Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, as part of their anti-government movement with a 10-point demand that includes dissolution of parliament. Earlier, Rumeen Farhana announced the decision from the party’s Golapbagh rally on Saturday.

The MPs sent their resignation through an email on Saturday.