Information and Broadcasting Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud has criticized the Election Commission’s role in installing CCTV cameras in polling booths, saying that the presence of surveillance cameras in the voting room loses the secrecy involved in voting.
Hasan Mahmud, who is joint general secretary of Awami League, was speaking at a briefing at the Secretariat on Wednesday afternoon.
“A secret room is a secret room. People will vote there in secret. If surveillance cameras are installed there, then the rooms will no longer be secret rooms. This is the opinion of general people and law experts,” he added.
If the Election Commission can watch people voting, then it will be a violation of a voter’s privacy, he continued further.
The information minister said: “CCTV cameras can be installed. But there is a lot of criticism about CCTV in secret rooms. Lawyers have said it will violate the rights of the voter.”
The use of CCTV cameras is the most talked-about subject in the country now after the recent by-election to the Gaibandha-5 constituency, which the EC eventually cancelled after observing the chaos developing around the voting through CCTV cameras from Dhaka.
In a dialogue with the EC on Wednesday, former election commissioner M Sakhawat Hossain had suggested increasing the use of CCTVs instead of using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) at the parliamentary elections.
“There is a lot of controversy about EVMs. It would be better to use CCTV as much as possible in the budget, where EVMs will be bought for 150 constituencies,” told Sakhawat.
When contacted, a central leader of the Awami League told Dhaka Tribune that currently there is a provision in Election Commission law that the EC can submit information collected from any sources but there is no specific mention of CCTV camera footage.
“If the EC wants to use CCTV footage as a source on a mass scale, I think that provision needs to be subjected to amendment in the law by the government,” he added.