The dates for different stages of the election--submission of nomination papers, their scrutiny and withdrawal of candidature--have also been rescheduled in the new timetable.

The EC announcement of the new schedule--after 10 days of its surreptitious and hasty declaration of January 21 as the election date--came following a series of negotiations between the council of advisers to the caretaker government and political parties.

"The [polls] schedule was re-fixed so that all political parties can participate in the election," EC Secretary Abdur Rashid Sarkar said at a news briefing after announcing the new schedule finalised at an EC meeting yesterday afternoon.

"The election was rescheduled on the basis of a consensus among the political parties," he said.

Acting Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice Mahfuzur Rahman, however, declined to make any comment on the rescheduling.

The BNP accepted the changed polls schedule while The Awami League (AL) said it would comment on it after recasting of the EC is done.

"The Election Commission officials showed us a revised schedule and we have agreed with it," BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan told reporters after a meeting with a team of advisers.

A meeting of the AL was going on at the time of filing this report at 8:30pm yesterday and AL Joint General Secretary Obaidul Quader told The Daily Star that the party will not formally say anything on the new election schedule before the meeting ends.

According to the new schedule published through a gazette notification, December 21 is the last date for filing nomination papers, December 22 for scrutiny of the nomination papers by returning officers, and December 28 for withdrawal of candidature.

The previous schedule announced on November 27 had set December 10 for filing nominations, December 11 for scrutiny, and December 19 for withdrawal of candidature.

The EC has kept only two days in the new schedule for re-poling in case voting is stopped on grounds of violence at any polling station. The time in the previous elections had been at least 10 to 12 days.

On this time constraint, the EC secretary said, "We hope the election will be completed in due time as all political parties agreed to participate in the polls."

In the previous schedule, the EC kept a 32-day gap between the last dates for withdrawal of candidature and the polling day to utilise the time for printing a huge amount of ballot papers.

The difference in the new schedule has come down to 25 days, same as was in the 2001 elections.

The previous schedule announced by the EC after a late night consultation with President and Chief Adviser Iajuddin Ahmed had pushed the country towards further political turmoil. The AL-led 14-party alliance and other political parties outright rejected the schedule and launched movements for its cancellation while the BNP-led four-party alliance kept on demanding for holding the election as per the announced schedule.

The council of advisers initiated a move to resolve the crisis last Friday. After a series of meetings with the political parties, they came up on Sunday with a package proposal that included rearrangement of the election schedule.