Election action plan being made keeping December polls in mind: EC Anwarul Islam Sarkar

The Election Commission is making the electoral "action plan" with an eye on polls this December, Election Commissioner Md Anwarul Islam Sarkar confirmed today (16 April).

Talking to reporters about the draft "roadmap", he said the EC wants to publish a printed copy of its plan in July after completing all the pre-preparatory work for the 13th National Parliament election. 

EC Anwarul Islam said, "Since we took charge, we have been moving forward with our own work plan, which is the official roadmap. As an expression of that, we have collected and sorted out the information on the electoral distribution of the constituencies in the initial stage. The voter list information is in the final stage, and the registration work is also ongoing."

He said he hoped to complete the work within three months if we get the necessary amendment to the law regarding delimitation.

Earlier, the Election Commission, in its reform proposal, asked  to base boundaries on geographical area, location, and the latest population census report instead of prioritising population for determining boundaries.

Speaking to The Business Standard, Anwarul said if the law wasn't amended by June, then the delimitation work will be done as per the current law."  

The constitutional body also wants to complete the overall work, including the registration of new parties, and exchange views with the parties before the schedule.

"We will roughly complete the pre-work of the work plan in the next three months. Hopefully, we will get the printed copy of the printed work plan, which the EC publishes before the elections, around June-July."

After completing the registration of new parties, the EC wants to hold a dialogue with all the new and old parties.

In response to a question, Sarkar said so far three new parties have applied for registration. 

"However, they have asked for an extension of time." 

He said applications for registration will be accepted until 20 April.

No decision has been made yet on extending the time, he said.

"We will have to sit with the stakeholders before declaring the schedule. After the new party comes and fulfills the conditions, we will sit with the new ones and the old ones. If we don't complete the registration work, then the new ones will have a hard time, we couldn't come."

On the law and order situation, he said, "If we do a comparative review of the law and order situation during the month of Ramadan or compared to the past, I think it is improving continuously…if this continues, we do not consider it an obstacle to holding elections."

Around 62 lakh new voters will be added to voter list 

Around 62 lakh new voters will be  added to the updated voter list, EC Anwarul said. 

Among them, 42 lakh were eligible voters who had previously been left out.  

Additionally, around 21 lakh deceased voters were identified and subsequently removed from the electoral roll to ensure accuracy. 

After these corrections, the net increase in the voter list is approximately 41 lakh.

"We are confident that the country now has a proper and accurate voter list. At least there are no false voters in the list, so we believe no controversy will arise regarding its credibility," he said.