The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Dr ATM Shamsul Huda yesterday said the Election Commission (EC) was in favour of holding the general elections ahead of the stipulated timeframe mentioned in the roadmap.

He, however, said the Commission might be able to understand as to how far the polls could be advanced from the timeframe after completion of the current phase of preparing the voters’ list, when 45 per cent of the rolls expected to be finished.

The CEC said this in an exclusive interview with a private TV channel yesterday.

Meanwhile, Election Commissioner M Sohul Hussain yesterday told reporters that EC was planning to hold dialogue with political parties on delimitation of parliamentary constituencies in February.

He said the Commission would not go for delimitation of constituencies if the political parties do not agree.

Sohul Hussain said the Commission would discuss the matter further during the second- round dialogue. “If they do not want, then we will not do,” he said.

Replying to a question, he said the EC will seek a direction from the High Court today for holding dialogue with the BNP immediately.

He, however, justified the EC’s previous decision for delimitation of constituencies according to number of population on the basis of census report.

The Election Commissioner said the delimitation would not take much time and there would be no legal complexity, as the court does not intervene in Constitutional obligation of the EC.

He said the political parties do not have any idea of the Geographical Information System that is going to be used in the task.

The political parties fear that it will take a long time, which would not be at all and will complete within a short time, he observed.

Asked if there were cases filed against delimiting any constituencies, Sohul hinted that this time the court might not take any case involving delimitation.

I think the court is not sitting that much idle that anyone will be welcomed if they go to file a case in this regard, he said.

Sohul Hussain said the delimiting the constituencies is one of the tasks that the EC is responsible to do according to the Constitution.

He said the EC in its election roadmap also committed to delimiting the constituencies after publication of the census report, published on July 7 last year.

It has to be done after the publication of the census report. The

population should be equally distributed. It cannot be that there should be eight lakh people in some constituencies and only one lakh elsewhere, he added.

In his interview, CEC Shamsul Huda said there is no possibility of destruction of the database of electoral rolls since it is being preserved in different tiers.

He said the database is being preserved from Thana to district, divisional and central levels and duplicate copy is also being preserved to protect it from any destruction.

The CEC said the database will be kept at computer hard disk, in the CD and there will also be its hard copy. Besides, he said, the database is also preserved at two separate places centrally.