Staff Reporter :
The Election Commission (EC) has decided to use electronic voting machines (EVMs) for a maximum of 150 seats in the next 12th parliamentary election.
Brushing aside objections by most of the political parties, the election commission came gave the decision.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the EC held at Nirbachan Bhaban in the city’s Agargaon area on Tuesday with Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal in the chair.
“The EC has decided to use the device in a maximum of 150 seats and minimum in one seat upon the availability of it,” Additional Secretary of EC Ashok Kumar Debnath informed the media regarding their decision on Tuesday.
While replying to a query, he said the EC now has 150,000 EVMs that can be used for 70 to 75 seats. If the voting machine is used in 150 seats, more EVMs will have to be purchased.
During the recently concluded dialogue with the commission, most of the political parties expressed skepticism and doubts about the electronic voting machine.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kazi Habibul Awal too said during the dialogue that most political parties did not believe in EVMs.
On Monday, the EC said there are both objections and support over the use of the voting device in the next national polls. The EC is yet to come to a conclusion on the overall issue.
However, Ashok Kumar on Tuesday said the EC has decided using EVM based on the proposals of the political parties during the dialogue. Earlier, election commissioner Md Alamgir on Sunday said the electronic voting machine (EVM) will be used in the forthcoming national parliamentary election. However, the decision as to how many constituencies it would be used, has not been finalised yet.
The 12th parliamentary elections will be held in late-2023 or early-2024. In the last parliamentary polls, EVMs were used in six constituencies.
Earlier on Monday, the EC termed the deployment of army during election to maintain law and order as “logical”.
The observation came after reviewing the proposals of the registered political parties during the dialogues with the EC.
The EC held dialogues with 28 registered political parties out of the total 39 in July last. Nine political parties boycotted the dialogue. The EC will hold dialogues with the rest of the two parties in September.
Almost half of the parties that took part in dialogues were against using the device.
Although BNP and its alliance boycotted dialogue with EC, they too opposed the use of EVMs at various times.
