Elections to 102 upazilas Feb 19

Elections to 102 out of 487 upazilas will be held on February 19, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed announced today. 

The elections to other upazila parishads will be held on expiry of their tenures.

The nomination submission deadline is January 25 while the scrutiny of the nomination papers will take place on January 27, according the schedule.

The last date for withdrawing nomination is February 3, the CEC declared at a press conference at the Election Commission Secretariat this afternoon.

The last election to 479 upazila parishads was held on January 22, 2009. The tenure of more than 100 upazila parishads is set to expire in February. Around 223 upazila parishads will complete their tenure in March, 35 in April, 85 in May, 18 in June and the rest between July and September this year, EC secretariat officials said.

According to the Upazila Parishad Act 1998, the tenure of an upazila parishad begins from the day the first meeting of the elected council is held. This is why, though election to the parishads was held at the same time, the expiry dates of the upazila parishads will vary.

Meanwhile, the EC has identified some discrepancies between the information given by the EC secretariat and that of the LGRD ministry regarding the expiration of different upazila parishads' tenures.

As per the electoral laws, polls to the upazila parishads are held within 180 days before their tenure expires.

With the addition of nine more upazila parishads in the last five years, the EC now will have to hold polls to 487 upazila parishads which have around eight crore voters, said the EC officials.

The EC has already sent letters to its field-level officials to prepare lists of polling centres for the elections and send these to the commission by January 26.

Upazila parishad election was first held in 1985 and then in 1990. After a long break, the last election was held in 2009, just three weeks after the ninth parliamentary polls.