The Election Commission (EC) on Monday finalised a project involving Tk 87.11 billion to procure 200000 electronic voting machines (EVMs) for holding next parliamentary polls.
EC's Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath confirmed the development, saying that they finalised the proposal in today's (Monday) meeting and it will be sent to the Planning Commission for its approval within two days.
Alongside the procurement of EVMs, the proposed fund will also be used in repairing, maintaining the voting machines and training of the manpower to handle the device, he told reporters after the meeting held at EC's Agargaon headquarters.
The move comes amid strong opposition over using EVMs in the next general elections by major political parties like Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jatiya Party during the EC's recent dialogue with the stakeholders.
Not only the political leaders, a group of 39 renowned citizens very recently called upon the EC to revise the decision of using EVMs, in up to 150 parliamentary seats at the forthcoming national election.
They also questioned about the use of some US$450 million in foreign currencies to import the devices amid the ongoing global economic crisis following the Russia-Ukraine war that badly disrupted global supply chain.
Talking to the reporters, EC Secretary Humayun Kabir Khandaker said the commission decided to use EVMs in maximum 150 constituencies in the upcoming 12th parliamentary elections.
With the existing EVMs, the commission can use these to hold maximum 70 parliamentary seats. So, it needs to buy 0.2 million voting machines to cover 150 seats.
"That's why the initiative was taken and it was placed in the previous meeting of the commission. But the proposal makers were asked to address some informational technicalities which they fulfilled today," he said.
Election Commissioner Md Alamgir Hossain said that a meeting in this regard with the finance minister will be needed to address the manpower situation over the upcoming national polls.
"We have video records of the talks with political parties. We checked their feedback at least three times. We decided on EVMs based on the political parties' written statements and video records," the election commissioner told reporters a day before decision on the EVMs.
The commission unveiled a roadmap for the next general election last week.
According to the roadmap, 17 of the 29 political parties which participated in the recently-held dialogue, were directly in favour of EVM and 12 against it.
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