No need to check them
Ignoring the demand of experts and the civil society, the Election Commission said it would not scrutinise audit reports on annual incomes and expenditures of political parties.
"As the reports are audited by registered chartered accountants, we don't need to scrutinise those anymore. Those reports are acceptable to us," said Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad.
"Besides, there is no legal provision to audit the reports by the Election Commission," he said at a press conference held at the media centre of the EC Secretariat yesterday.
Civil society members and experts believe that there should be a mechanism to examine the reports to ensure transparency in political party funding.
"The Election Commission has introduced the system of submitting annual audit reports by the political parties in 2008. It's a good achievement. But the reports should be checked by the commission to ensure more transparency in financial activities of those parties," former election commissioner M Sakhawat Hussain told The Daily Star.
Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman of Transparency International Bangladesh said mere submission of audit reports was not enough, as those were needed to be scrutinised by the EC to ensure transparency.
According to the Political Parties Registration Rule, 2008, all the registered parties have to submit to the EC their annual audit reports certified by a registered chartered accountant firm by July 31 of the following year.
This year, however, the EC had extended the deadline by one month as 14 political parties, including the ruling Awami League, BNP and the Jatiya Party, failed to comply.
The AL yesterday submitted the audit report saying its income was around Tk 12.4 crore and it spent around Tk 6.7 crore in 2013, said AL Assistant Secretary ABM Reazul Kabir Kawsar.
Earlier, the BNP submitted the report on August 14 and the JP on August 25.
Almost all the parties had submitted the reports, said Rowshan Ara, senior assistant secretary to the EC Secretariat.
A political party's registration would be cancelled if it failed to submit the report for three consecutive years, according to the Representation of the People Order (RPO).
The EC has not considered Jamaat-e-Islami as a registered political party since the High Court on August 1 last year declared its registration illegal. An appeal against the HC verdict is pending with the Appellate Division.
DHAKA CITY VOTER ROLL
The EC would start updating the electoral roll in Dhaka city today and continue until September 10, said CEC Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad.
The EC data collectors would make door-to-door visits and collect information of new voters. Voters' photos would be taken and their registration would be done between September 18 and November 15.
"If anyone fails to get registered, they can be a voter any time around the year by communicating with their respective thana or upazila election officers," said the CEC.
The EC on May 15 started the electoral roll updating programme across the country and would continue it till November 15. More than 30 lakh new voters have so far been registered, while the existing number of voters is around 9.19 crore.
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