BNP has formed a central coordination committee to assist its mayoral hopefuls and monitor the whole process of the country’s maiden partisan municipality polls scheduled for December 30.

The party’s acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has been made convener of the committee while Joint Secretary General Md Shahjahan made member secretary, Sayrul Kabir Khan, a staff of BNP chief’s press wing, told The Daily Star.

Committees have also been formed at every division to oversee the polls in collaboration with the central committee, he added.

All the divisional committee members are scheduled to sit with the central committee convener and member secretary tomorrow at 11:00am to fix their action plan ahead of the polls, Sayrul informed.

The meeting will be held at BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s Gulshan office, he said.

Observation by local and foreign observers may help add credence to the status of fairness of election and make them credible at home and abroad, the chief election commissioner (CEC) said in a letter to the EU.

CEC Kazi Habibul Awal was responding to a letter sent by the European Union informing him of its decision not to send a full-fledged observation mission for Bangladesh's upcoming national election.

"As I appreciate EU decision on the subject, I feel urged to assure you that with required assistance received from the government, Election Commission (EC) will exert its best to ensure free, fair, participatory and credible elections. Government is also repeatedly making its pledges to achieve this end," the CEC said in the letter dated September 23.

"Nevertheless, observation by local and foreign observers may help add credence to the status of fairness of election so as to make that credible at home and abroad.

"Be that as it may, I believe the European Union (EU) will nonetheless continue to support, in whatever way deemed expedient, our efforts in making the ensuing general parliamentary elections free, fair, participatory and credible," the letter added.

EU communicated its decision to the EC through a letter to the chief election commissioner on Wednesday.

"Based on the recommendations of the exploratory mission -- and taking into consideration the budget for EU Election Observation Missions for 2023/2024 -- High Representative Josep Borrell has decided not to deploy a fully-fledged EU Election Observation Mission," read the EU letter.

"The High Representative's decision reflects the fact that, at the present time, it is not sufficiently clear whether the necessary conditions will be met at the point in time when the elections take place," read the letter written by EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley.

The activists of BNP youth and student wings locked into a clash with a group of people, who claimed themselves as “Asal BNP” [Original BNP], when they went to grab the party’s Nayapaltan central office in Dhaka today.

The “Asal BNP” activists brought out a procession and marched towards the BNP Nayapaltan headquarters intending to grab the office around 3:45pm, Tofail Alam, officer-in-charge of Paltan Police Station, told The Daily Star.

As they reached the party office, chase and counter chase took place between BNP supports and the marchers triggering a clash, the OC said.

At one stage, police fired several rounds of bullets to disperse them. Some five or six people were detained from the spot, the police official added.

Meanwhile, BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said a group of government agents under its all-out patronisation has carried out the attack on the BNP office to implement their “blueprint design”.

Claiming the attack as motivated, Rizvi said at least 15 BNP leaders and activists were injured in the attack.

BNP will hold a joint meeting of the party on Saturday to evaluate yesterday’s municipality election results.

Chaired by BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the meeting will begin at 11:00am at the party’s Nayapaltan central office, said a party press release today.

BNP’s joint secretaries general, organising secretaries and presidents and general secretaries of its different front originations will attend the meeting.

The party suffered a debacle in the elections to 234 municipalities bagging only 21 mayoral posts. The party has blamed massive irregularities for the humiliating defeat. 

The Election Commission is going to buy two lakh Electronic Voting Machines for the next national polls, spending more than 10 times what India paid to obtain its EVMs.

An EVM in India costs about Rs 20,000, said an EC official on the condition of anonymity.

When the EC bought 1.5 lakh EVMs from  Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory (BMTF) in 2018, each machine cost Tk 2.3 lakh, the official said.

This time, the outlay is bound to be more due to the appreciation of the dollar, the official pointed out adding that a development project proposal involving Tk 7,500-Tk 8,000 crore was being prepared.

More than four years back, the EC bought the EVMs under a Tk 3,825-crore project.

The base price of an EVM was $2,387 (about Tk 2,26,842 in today's money); another Tk 25,000 had to be paid for its accessories.

Last time, there was no value-added tax on the final price of the EVMs but this time there might be taxes, which would increase the cost further, the official said, adding that the base price would remain the same.

Asked why the Bangladeshi device was more expensive than that of many countries including India, EVM Project Director Syed Raquibul Hasan said, "A Tata car does not cost the same here as in India.

"You can't compare our EVMs with those of any other country. In our EVMs, we have added features like a fingerprint matching system, audit card, polling card, and other safety and security measures. The Indian EVM has no such features.

"If a fingerprint scanner and other accessories were added, what will be the cost of an Indian EVM?" Hasan said.

 Asked why the EC has not floated any national or international tender for the EVMs, which might have yielded competitive bidding, Hasan said, "Only BMTF can provide the specific machine."

BMTF is a commercial plant of the Bangladesh Army. The state-owned enterprise has the capacity to deliver two lakh EVMs ahead of the next general election likely to be held in late December next year or early January 2024, according to Hasan.

The move to buy the additional EVMs comes on the back of the EC's August-23 decision to go for electronic voting in up to 150 constituencies in the polls despite major opposition parties' objection to the use of the devices.

The EC has 1.5 lakh EVMs that can be used in 70-80 constituencies at one go in the next polls.

The development project proposal now being prepared includes the setting up of 10 warehouses in 10 regions, recruiting manpower and training them to handle the devices, and buying vehicles for transporting the EVMs.

The warehouses will have foolproof security, firefighting equipment and temperature control for the proper preservation of the EVMs.

The three-storied warehouses would be on 40 kathas of land with more than 60,000 square feet of space to keep around 45,000 EVMs.

"We will need money to buy or acquire land and to have modern facilities to store the machines," Hasan said. Campaigns would be required to make people aware of the EVM use and dispel misconceptions.

The EC is yet to choose the constituencies where EVMs will be used in the next general election.

"This will be finalised when the election schedule is fixed," said an EC official.

EVMs would mostly be used in the urban seats with smooth transportation and also where the devices were earlier used for different elections, the official added.

EVMs were first used in the 2018 parliamentary election.