Dhaka
\nBangladesh will hold its general election on December 23 and for the first time will use electronic voting machines on a limited scale, the electoral body announced on Thursday, amid an impasse between the government and the main opposition alliance over the timing of the polls.<\/p>\n
“The 11th general election will be held across Bangladesh on December 23,” Chief Election Commissioner Nurul Huda said in a nationally televised address.Huda made the announcement hours after his meeting with four election commissioners to finalise the poll date which came amid calls from the newly-floated National Unity Front (NUF) to defer the election schedule while the ruling Awami League urged the commission to stick to its plan.<\/p>\n
The candidates have to submit their nomination papers between November 9 and November 19. The nomination papers will be scrutinised on November 22.
\nNearly 104.2 million people, including a little more than 51.6 million women, are registered as voters. They will elect 300 representatives to Parliament through the balloting in about 40,199 polling stations.<\/p>\n
He said, “The countdown of the national election has already begun and the works of buying polls materials and printing have been completed,” as he promised to ensure a “level playing field for all”.<\/p>\n
The Election Commission plans to use 150,000 EVMs in at least 100 randomly selected constituencies across the country during the vote, the Dhaka Tribune reported.<\/p>\n
Huda urged all political parties to take part in the election to continue Bangladesh’s “development efforts and put democracy on a stronger footing” even as he asked them to minimise their differences.<\/p>\n
As many as 600,000 members of police, BGB, Bangladesh Coast Guard, Ansar and Village Defence Party will be deployed for law enforcement. The army will also be deployed to assist the civil administration.<\/p>\n
The ruling Awami League and its main ally Jatiya Party welcomed the announcement with League activists staging a street march supporting the polls.<\/p>\n
Opposition parties have expressed concern that the polls will not be democratic and have threatened protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dhaka Bangladesh will hold its general election on December 23 and for the first time will use electronic voting machines on a limited scale, the electoral body announced on Thursday, amid an impasse between the government and the main opposition alliance over the timing of the polls. “The 11th general election will be held across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46654,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46652\/revisions\/46654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}