EU team wants to know about voter turnout

The visiting European Union technical team on Monday wanted to know about the voter turnout of the 12th parliamentary elections from the election commission (EC).

US-based International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) also made similar queries to the commission.

EC additional secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath said the EU technical team, as well as IRI and NDI delegations, made their queries during separate meetings with the EC officials.

They mainly wanted to know about various data and information on the polls. As they have been briefed everything, they expressed satisfaction, he added.

Voting for the 12th parliamentary elections was held on 7 January. The next, the EC said voter turnout was 41.80 per cent, raising questions and doubts.

EC secretary Md Jahangir Alam told the media around 12:30pm of the day of the election that voter turnout was about 18.50 per cent as of 12:10pm. Later at 3:00pm, he said turnout was 26.37 per cent so far, but this calculation might fluctuate a little since data from all polling centres are yet to receive.

After the polling ended on 4:00pm, the chief election commissioner Kazi habibul Awal briefed the media around 5:00pm. As first, he said, “28 per cent of votes have been cast so far.” As that time, a person sitting next to him whispered in his ear, “It’s 40 per cent.” The CEC then said, “40 per cent. Yet 100 per cent of data from dashboard have not been received yet.” What data they have received so far is reliable, but this is not certain yet and this may vary a little bit, the CEC added.

Sources at EC said the EU technical team, as well as NDI and IRI delegations largely wanted to know about this confusion on voter turnout. The EC officials told then that presiding officers of all polling centres have been instructed to provide data on voter turnout in EC’s special software in every two hours, but all presiding officers could not do it properly. Presiding officers could not immediately provide data on voter turnout from the constituencies in three hill districts and several other districts. The EC officials also showed the related data and information to the EU, NDI and IRI delegations.

An EC official told Prothom Alo the EU team sought details data on this matter and they would be provided with detailed information.