Upazila chairman election: EC to raise security money to Tk 100,000

The election commission (EC) has decided to increase the amount of security deposit for the upazila parishad chairman post in the election to Tk 100,000 from existing Tk 10,000.

It has also decided to raise the amount for the vice chairman post to Tk 75,000 from the current amount of security deposit of Tk 5,000.

Apart from this, the election overseeing body has decided to scrap the rule of submitting the signatures of a certain number of voters, who are supporters of prospective independent candidates, alongside the nomination papers for the Upazila Parishad election.

The decisions were taken from a meeting of the commission on Tuesday, EC secretary Jahangir Alam disclosed this to the media.

Despite EC’s taking the decision, those will not be implemented immediately as the decisions will be sent to the law ministry for vetting. The ministry would send those back to the EC. After assessing the decisions, the EC will forward them to the ministry again. Then a gazette notification will be published in this regard.

The EC secretary also informed the media that the commission’s law amendment affairs committee proposed updating a few rules and codes of conduct, which have been approved in today’s meeting.

One of such amendments says a prospective candidate could run campaigns taking at best five people along with him from the time of submitting the nomination paper until getting an electoral symbol.

The EC has also decided to raise the percentage of votes a candidate has to get to get back the security deposit. The proposed amendment says a candidate has to get 15 per cent of total votes cast in an election instead of existing 12.5 per cent. The commission has also approved the proposal to publish colour posters alongside the traditional black and white ones.

The EC to organise elections to 481 upazilas across the country in four phases in May this year. The first phase of the election will be held on 4 May, second phase on 11 May, third phase on 18 May and the fourth phase of the upazila parishad election will be held on 25 May.

The governing Bangladesh Awami League has already said that they will not allow its party symbol in the upcoming upazila parishad election.

On the other hand, the possibility of joining the upazila parishad is low for the key opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which boycotted the recently concluded 12th parliamentary election, under the party banner.

As a result, the contest will be among the independent candidates.

In this context, the EC has taken the decisions.