The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

With the target of 40 lakh voters in the capital, the Election Commission (EC) is going to start voter list preparation in the Dhaka city from November 20.

Some 36.36 lakh voters enrolled in the voter list that was cancelled last year.

According to the EC, the figure is likely to increase by about 3.50 lakh this time.

The EC will start collecting information of voters visiting their houses in the city from November 20. The work for taking photographs of voters will start from December 1. In order to complete the job, the EC has already appointed 188 assistant registration officers, 2,627 supervisors and 13,040 information collectors. Training of them is now going on, which will continue up to November 19.

Biswas Lutfar Rahman, deputy election commissioner of Dhaka Division, said on an average an information collector would distribute 300 prescribed forms and fill them up on the spots.

He said after completion of the work of information collection, a total of 951 camps would be opened in 90 wards of the capital in phases. The work for photograph taking will continue up to March, although the voter lists preparation work in the Dhaka city is supposed to be completed by February according to the schedule given by the Bangladesh Army.

The EC official said the process of appointing data operators for voter lists preparation in the Dhaka city is now going on. The Bangladesh Army will provide training to data operators on various technical issues on completion of their appointment.

"We'll start the photograph-taking work in 33 wards of the Dhaka city from December 1," he said.

The photograph-taking work will be launched simultaneously at Dhaka Airport, Uttara, Pallabi, Kafrul, Shah Ali, Cantonment, Khilgaon, Sabujbagh, Motijheel, Paltan, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Mohammadpur, Adabar, Dhanmondi, New Market, Ramna, Lalbagh, Sutrapur, Shyampur, and some areas in Jatrabari on December 1.

The EC sources said in Dhaka city there were some 29 lakh voters in the voters lists of the 2001 parliamentary election. Names of more than 7 lakh voters were added to the voter list when it was prepared in 2006, just after five years. However, the EC thinks that the number of voters in the Dhaka city may increase by 3.50 lakh this time.