Election schedule to be declared in early Dec: CEC Nasir

“Hopefully, what we expect is that it will be declared in the second week of December. When the schedule is announced, then you will know the dates (voting date, nomination deadline and the last date for withdrawal of candidacy),” he said, replying to a question from reporters.

The CEC was talking to reporters after inspecting a mock voting exercise demonstrated at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Government Girls High School in the capital.

The Election Commission conducted the mock voting exercise from 8am to 12pm for both the upcoming national election and referendum, which are likely to be held simultaneously on a single day in early February 2026.

The CEC said the mock voting exercise was arranged to identify what is required to create an ideal environment for a fair, credible and participatory election as promised by the Commission.

“The purpose of arranging it (the mock voting exercise) is to understand, through a practical demonstration, what kind of environment is needed inside a polling station to deliver a fair, acceptable and participatory election we have promised the nation. We wanted to observe everything—what the atmosphere should be like, how the queues of voters should form, how polling officers and presiding officers should sit and operate, how the overall management should function, and even what role you, the journalists, might play,” he said.

The current Election Commission, headed by AMM Nasir Uddin, was constituted just one year ago and had no experience of holding a single local body or parliamentary election.

Besides, this commission will have to hold a referendum simultaneously with the national election, which came as an additional responsibility to the current commission amid the changed situation after the 2024 student-led mass uprising that toppled Sheikh Hasina’s regime.