EC to start scrutinising list on Jan 20, final list on March 2
The Election Commission on Thursday announced a draft voter list with 12,36,83,512 voters, including 6,33,30,103 male voters, 6,03,52,415 female voters and 994 voters of the transgender community as of Thursday with an increase in the number of voters by 1.50 per cent.
The commission said that it would start scrutinising the voter list on January 20 through door-to-door visits to the people across the country, targeting the 13th general elections.
Election commissioner Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah disclosed the draft voter list at a press conference at the commission in the capital Dhaka on Thursday.
鈥榃e will start scrutinising the voter list by going door to door on January 20. The voter lists of the previous years will also be聽 scrutinised,鈥� he said.
Sanaullah said that the scrutiny would drop deceased people from the list and check dual citizenship and inclusion of foreign nationals in the list with fraudulence.
鈥榃e had taken special measures in the Chattogram region so that Rohingya people could not be included in the list and the list was updated announcing special zone,鈥� he said.
He said that they detected 30 Rohingya people became voters from Nilphamari district to avoid the strict measures.
Responding to a question, he said that if they work properly, they would complete the process of scrutiny by June 30.
He urged the people from all walks of life, including political parties, to give opinion or objection regarding the draft voter list within next 15 days, saying that the last date of resolving those is January 30.
Asked whether the whole voter list would be updated in the process, he said, 鈥榊ou [journalists] said that previously there was a controversial voter list. We don鈥檛 know the year when the debate over voter list was created. How will we find out if we do not scrutinise all voters?鈥�
Urging all who turned 18 as of January 1 to file applications to be voters, he said that there was a legal bar to becoming voters for those who turned 18 after January 1, 2025.
Referring to the Voter List Act, 2009, he said that as per the law, anyone could be voter when they turned 18 by January 1.
Mentioning the interim government chief adviser Muhammad Yunus鈥檚 announcement of possible time of next general elections between December 2025 and June 2026, he said, 鈥榃e have to make preparations for the elections. We are always ready for that. Creating voter list is also part of the preparations.鈥�
He said that if a significant number of people turned 18 between January 2, 2025 and January 1, 2026, they might issue an ordinance to make them voters.
Asked whether the EC move would overlap the Election Reform Commission鈥檚 works, Sanaullah said that there was nothing to overlap the reform commission as a correct voter list was required for a credible election.
He also said that they had included expatriate Bangladeshis in seven countries, including five Asian countries 鈥� Malaysia, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates 鈥� and two European countries 鈥� the United Kingdom and Italy.
鈥榃e have conducted activities in 11 missions abroad. We have made 13,151 voters against 37,150 applications. Some applications were rejected and we will include the rest after scrutiny,鈥� he added.
Asked about the commission鈥檚 position on making the age limit of voter at 17, he said that they had heard the personal opinion of the chief adviser over the issue.
鈥榃e will make a decision in this regard if political parties reach a consensus over the issue and changes are made to the constitution,鈥� he added.
In the past three general elections held in 2014, 2018 and 2024, the Awami League won with fraud and flaws, including rigging, ballot stuffing and placing dummy candidates and the polls were boycotted by the major opposition political parties, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
The AL government was ousted on August 5 through a student-led mass uprising after its over 15 years of authoritarian rule and the Yunus-led interim government took office on August 8.
