EU and US expert teams seek info on voting rate from EC

Election Commission

The European Union (EU) expert team has asked the Election Commission officials about the voting rate in the 12th parliamentary elections. The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) from the US have also asked for the same information, the vernacular daily Prothom Alo has reported.

On Monday, the EU expert team met with the officials of the Election Commission (EC). Representatives of IRI and NDI also held separate meetings with EC officials. EC Secretariat sources said that there was a query about the voting rate.

EC Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath told the Prothom Alo that the EU 'technical' team and representatives of IRI and NDI met yesterday. They basically wanted to know various information over the election. They have been given all the information. They expressed satisfaction with this.

The 12th parliamentary elections were held on January 7. The day after the election, the EC said that 41.80 percent votes were cast in this election. However, there are doubts and questions about this turnout. On the election day at 12:30 pm, the EC Secretary. Jahangir Alam told reporters that average 18.5 percent votes were cast till 12:10 pm across the country. In the second round of briefing around 3:30 pm, the secretary said that 26.37 percent votes were cast till 3 pm. However, there may be some changes in the statistics because information was not available from everywhere.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kazi Habibul Awal said at a press conference after 5pm that the voter turnout was 28 percent. Someone on the side told him that the rate was 40 percent. Then the CEC said, 40 percent. Still, EC didn't have 100 percent information on the dashboard. The CEC said, 40 percent which has come, so far it is reliable. But it's not certain, there may be some changes to this.

According to EC sources, the EU expert group and NDI, IRI mainly wanted to know about this confusion about the voting rate. EC officials said the presiding officers of all polling stations were instructed to report the voting rate every two hours. They were asked to provide information in a special EC software. But not all officials were able to do it properly. Officials could not instantly give the voter turnout in several polling stations in the parliamentary seats of three hill districts and some constituencies enlewhere. The information and data has been shown to representatives of EU, NDI, IRI.

An EC official said that the EU team has sought detailed information in this regard. All the information will be provided in detail, the Prothom Alo report said.