Dhaka to deploy army during 2018 General Elections

Bangladesh would deploy its army during the general elections scheduled to be held in November-December to curb any form of polling irregularities during the voting process.

As reported by the Daily Star on Wednesday, the election commission is devising solutions to ensure that the irregularities that took place during Khulna City Corporation (KCC) polls are not repeated.

While commenting on the ballot-paper system still in prevalence in the country's electoral system, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC ), KM Nurul Huda said, "To avoid such irregularities in the upcoming election, implementation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) is a must."

The country which still uses the age-old ballot system during voting will for the first time use the EVM's to cast votes. Earlier in October 2017, Bangladesh Election Commission announced to use the EVM to solve the problem of false voting.

The new voting model will be based on the successful use of the EVM in India, and the United States.

As part of a trail, the EC had already made use of the EVM in the 2012 Chittagong Municipality Corporation Election and later in the Comilla City Council Election where the results were quite satisfactory.

He further said that the deployment of the army would only be done for the general elections and for the recent city polls.

Huda gave these details while addressing a press conference after attending a two-hour training session for the election officials of Barisal and Faridpur zones over the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM).

He also refused to request any particular party to join the upcoming elections.

According to CEC, city corporation elections to Gazipur will be held on June 30 and elections to Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal will be held on July 30, ahead of the next national polls.

Earlier, the mayoral polls kicked off with the Khulna City Corporation elections on May 15 in which the Awami League mayor candidate Talukder Abdul Khaleque swept off 1,74,851 votes defeating his rival from the BNP Nazrul Islam Monju who bagged 1,09,251 votes.