The entire next year will remain busy with the elections to various levels of the public representatives in the local government administrations of the country.
Although elections to many of the municipalities have already been completed while 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 Election Commission (EC), voting in the elections to all the municipalities will be held in four phases next year. The EC is discussing about the postponed elections to the Chattogram City Corporation (CCC). The CCC elections is expected to be held at the beginning of 2021.
Besides, the EC is considering about the elections to over 4,500 UPs along with the elections to different city corporations and municipalities. The EC already has informed that UP elections will be started in phases from March next year.
The EC officials also said they have completed the preparations of holding the elections to different District Councils and Narayanganj City Corporation.
It should be mentioned that many of the elections, including CCC elections, had been postponed due to COVID-19 Pandemic this year. As the situation has started to improve, many of the postponed elections have already been completed by this time. The EC has also announced the schedules of the elections to 86 municipalities in two phases.
As per the election schedules, elections to 25 municipalities will be held on December 28. In the second phase, elections to 61 other municipalities will be held on January 16.
The selection of candidates for the municipal elections has already started among the political parties. In the first phase, Awami League, BNP and other parties have already finalised their candidates.
These parties are also going to start selling party nomination papers for the second phase of elections. As a result, political activities in the grass root levels have been intensified a lot centring the municipal elections.
EC senior secretary Mohammad Alamgir said that the CCC elections could be held in the first half of January. Preliminary discussions have been held in the EC about this election.
He said that there is no need to announce new schedule for CCC elections and only the date of the vote will be announced.
EC senior secretary Mohammad Alamgir further said that the entire next year will remain busy with the elections to various levels in the local government representatives.
The EC official sources said, immediate after the completion of the municipalities, the process for the holding of elections of 4,500 upazila parishads will be started. The EC has already started prepare accordingly.
They said that the EC wants to complete all the municipality elections in four phases by the month of February and start the process of UP elections from March. The UP elections will also be held in phases like in the previous tenure.
It should be mentioned that in 2016, elections to 4,500 Ups were held in six phases.
According to EC officials, the EC wants 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 initiated.