Election Commissioner Begum Rashida Sultana Tuesday said there would be no CCTV cameras in the by-elections for the parliamentary seats to be held on February 1 due to the lack of a sufficient budget.
She also urged all the political parties to participate in the elections while exchanging views with the presiding officers of two constituencies at Bogra Zilla Parishad auditorium.
Regarding the use of EVMs in the parliamentary elections, she said the EC currently had machines for 60-70 constituencies. “Earlier, there were adequate EVM machines for holding elections to 80 constituencies,” she added.
In Rangpur, Election Commissioner Brigadier General (Retd) Ahsan Habib Khan said that the EC had taken various complaints seriously, including slowness in taking votes in EVM machines and non-matching of voter fingerprints in various elections.
“For this reason, new scanner machines have been provided, so that voters do not lose their enthusiasm about voting through EVMs. This arrangement is being made to confirm each voter with ten fingerprints,” he told reporters at a workshop at Rangpur Circuit House auditorium on Tuesday afternoon.
Ahsan Habib added that the new EC had conducted more than 500 elections using EVMs. “There were no clashes or killings. We consider this a great achievement for us.”