The United Nations Development Programme is taking back the 40,000 ballot boxes it had given to the Election Commission before the 10th national election as the commission said those were not transparent.
The EC received a letter from the UNDP on Wednesday in this regard.
The boxes were sent to the field-level polling centres before the January 5 election. But those were not used. A committee formed by the EC reported that the imported ballot boxes were not transparent, Deputy Secretary of the EC Shahjahan Khan said.
EC officials say the commission imported 2,68,000 transparent ballot boxes for the parliamentary and upazila parishad polls. It also imported another 40,000 transparent boxes from the UNDP.
The field-level officials found that the UNDP’s boxes were not similar to the rest. The commission formed a committee led by Deputy Secretary Matiar Rahman to investigate the matter.
The boxes, distributed on October 8 last year, are now reserved at 10 regional election offices. Those will be sent back to the EC Secretariat after the order of EC.