Almost all the major political parties, including Awami League, BNP and Jatiya Party remain busy with the elections to various levels of local government representatives in the country.
Centering the elections, political field at the root-level have also started gaining momentum with the presence of leaders from the central office to grass-roots.
The Election Commission (EC) official sources said the entire next year will remain busy with elections to local government representatives.
According to the EC, elections to 329 municipalities will be held in four phases. Of them, in the first phase, elections to 25 municipalities will be held on December 28 while elections to 61 municipalities will be held on January 16 next year in the second phase and elections to 64 other municipalities will be held on January 30. However, schedules for the elections to the rest of the municipalities are yet to be announced.
All the elections are being held in cooperation with Awami League, BNP, Jatiya Party and several other political parties, including many left leaning and religion based political parties.
According to sources, although elections to many of the municipalities have already been completed and elections to many others are going on, the main flow of the elections to city corporations to union parishads (UP) are scheduled to start from December 28.
According to the decision of the EC, apart from the municipalities, the EC is discussing about holding of the elections to the Chattogram City Corporation (CCC), Narayanganj City Corporation, 4,500 Union Parishads (UP), over 400 upazila parishads and all the district councils from the March next year.
The EC officials also said they already have completed the preparations for holding the elections in different levels.
According to sources, all the elections held in recent times were participated by all the major parties, including BNP, Jatiya Party, different left leaning and Islamist parties.
The selection of candidates for the municipal elections has already started among the political parties. Awami League, BNP and other parties have already finalized their candidates scheduled to be held on December 28 and January 16.
Meanwhile, all the parties have started distribution of nomination forms among the candidates for the elections to 61 municipalities scheduled to be held on January 30.
On the other hand, political activities in the grass root levels have been intensified a lot centring the municipal elections.
The EC official sources said, immediately after the completion of the municipality’s polls, the process for the holding of elections of 4,500 Ups will be started.
They said that the EC plans to complete all the municipality elections in four phases by February and start the process of UP elections from March. The UP elections will also be held in phases like in the previous tenure.
According to EC officials, the EC plans to start UP elections from March 21 and complete by June or July next year. Elections to about 700 to 800 Ups will be held in each of the phases.
Besides, at the end of the UP elections, the process for holding elections to District Councils and Narayanganj City Corporation will be started.