The KM Nurul Huda-led Election Commission (EC) revealed its roadmap to the next national polls in July last year, five months after taking office.
However the process has apparently lost pace with the 11th Parliamentary Election due between late 2018 and early 2019.
The EC had outlined seven specific issues on the roadmap — legal reforms to strengthen the electoral process; Hold talks with stakeholders to get inputs; demarcation of constituencies; update the voters' list; establish polling stations according to regulations; fresh registrations of political parties and capacity building of concerned wings for free, fair and credible polls.
Eight months later, the EC has only been able to hold talks with stakeholders and update the electoral roll.
However, the law requires completing the updating of the voters’ list by Jan 31 while the EC may have finished its series of discussions but is yet to forward its recommendations to the government.
Despite falling behind with its targets, the EC, however, claims they are on the track to hold a free, fair and all-inclusive election.
“It will not affect the upcoming elections. We have enough time to finish the job,” said Election Commissioner Rafiqul Islam.
The Commission lags behind most on the matters of legal reforms as it was scheduled to finalise revisions for five laws and nine specific regulations by February.
It appeared to have rolled its sleeves in late that month, when visible initiatives were seen over amendments to the 1972 Representation of the Peoples Ordinance (RPO) and laws regarding demarcation of parliamentary constituencies.
Following a series of meetings, the Commission, however, failed to finalise a draft of the laws.
According to EC officials, an amendment or not, some provisions of the RPO will have to be revised.
The EC is trying its best, so that the bill of the amendments can be tabled in parliament during the budget session. Otherwise, a presidential ordinance will be required for the changes, they said.
On the law over constituencies, officials said chances are very less of an amendment as the EC has almost finished the job of demarcation in line with the existing laws.
On Mar 14, it published the draft and from Saturday, it started to hold hearings. The EC has said they will finalise the new borders for constituencies on Apr 30.
According to the EC’s roadmap, it was supposed to finish the scrutiny of political parties by January and complete the process of registering new parties by February.
Later, it said that the updated list of registered political parties will be announced in March, but it’s yet to be finished.
EC officials hope to complete the process by May. The process of sending the updated voters’ list with designated polling stations is expected to start from July, they said.
The top bureaucrat for the commission, however, said everything was on track.
“There might be some deviations in implementing any plans, but that does not that the election commission lags behind,” said Helaluddin Ahmed, secretary of the EC.