DCC polls at end of May

Polls to the bifurcated Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) will be held any day in the last week of May, Election Commissioner Brig Gen (retd) Mohammad Zabed Ali said yesterday.
Talking to journalists after a meeting of the Election Commission (EC), he said schedule of the election will be announced in the last week of next month.
It will be the first major election under the new EC headed by Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed, who took charge early last month.
The EC headed by his predecessor ATM Shamsul Huda in April 2010 had moved to hold the long overdue polls to the DCC in May the same year. But the Awami League-led government did not agree with the EC move.
In November last year, the government split the DCC into two by amending the relevant law and made it mandatory for the EC to hold the polls by the end of February this year.
But the Huda-led EC refused to do so due to time constraint. Its tenure expired early last month.
In such a situation, the government again amended the relevant law on February 28 and extended the time limit for holding the polls within 90 days, which will expire on May 29.
The EC yesterday sat to review the preparatory work for holding the polls within the extended time.
“We have asked officials to make preparations for the polls. Now we have much time to complete the job,” Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rakibuddin told journalists after yesterday's meeting.
The EC, however, did not fix the polls date.
Election Commissioner Zabed Ali said the present EC will implement the decisions taken by the previous EC regarding the DCC polls.
So, polls to the DCC (north) and DCC (south) will be held on the same day, he added.
“We will not change any decision of the previous EC. Even we will use electronic voting machines (EVMs) on a limited scale,” Zabed said.
The EC has 1,000 EVMs while the number of polling stations in the bifurcated DCC is around 9,000, he mentioned.
Meanwhile, leaders of the ruling Awami League-led alliance and some individuals are already gearing up their polls campaign.
But leaders of the BNP-led opposition parties still remain silent on the issue as their parties vehemently opposed splitting the DCC.
Polls to the undivided DCC were held in April 2002 and tenure of the mayor and councillors expired in May 2007.
In such a situation, the then mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka and the councillors continued to hold office till the DCC was split.
The government then appointed administrators to run the two city corporations.