Military to prepare Bangladesh voters roll with photographs

Bangladeshs reconstituted Election Commission said on Wednesday that the military personnel will prepare the voters roll for the countrys stalled ninth parliamentary election, which the interim administration had pledged to hold sometime next year.

By Nazrul Islam

Dhaka, May 9 : Bangladesh's reconstituted Election Commission said on Wednesday that the military personnel will prepare the voters roll for the country's stalled ninth parliamentary election, which the interim administration had pledged to hold sometime next year.

"The army will prepare the voters roll with photograph. Now we are looking into methodologies and cost involvement which they (army) proposed," the Chief Election Commissioner ATM Shamsul Huda told reporters after a presentation given by the military personnel at the election commission secretariat.

The CEC, made clear for the first time that the army will prepare the voters roll. Earlier he had said that the army would extend support to hold the next election.

At the presentation, a four-member army delegation showed the election commissioners and senior election officials on how they will work at the field level and the methodology to compile data for the voters roll.

The army has developed special software for the purpose of voters roll preparation, the Commission was told.

Election officials said, the army delegation assured the Commission of completing the voters roll within the 18 month timeframe, as announced by the CEC.

Bangladesh is home to 140 million people over half of whom are believed to be eligible for exercise their right to franchise.

The army says that over 8000 teams comprising five persons each will work for collecting personal information, fingerprint and photographs of voters while the personnel from the armed forces will work as supervisor during data collection.

The army's expert team will compile the information; set up a central data bank and network with field-level offices of the Election Commission.

Earlier, the army made multimedia presentations on the issue at a Cabinet meeting in the Chief Adviser's office on February 17. In the presentation, the army had said that it was capable of preparing voters' ID cards or national ID cards, as well as an electoral roll, within the shortest possible time.

The expert team assigned to prepare project proposal on preparation of voters roll with photographs and national ID cards is likely to provide the EC a list of logistics, which will be procured to implement the project, on Sunday.

The existing voters roll having huge number of forged voters created controversy last year, and a political group forced reconstitution of the Election Commission, which is now looking for a credible voters roll to hold credible polls.

ANI