Elections to partitioned Dhaka City Corporation north and south and Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) will be held on April 28 next.
Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad announced the polls schedules for the three city corporations at a press briefing at the EC Secretariat on Wednesday.
According to the schedules, the deadline for submission of nomination papers is March 29 while the nomination papers will be scrutinised on April 1 and 2 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is April 9.
Dhaka regional election officer Mihir Sarwar Morshed has been made returning officer for the DSCC polls while Dhaka district election officer Md Shah Alam for the DNCC election and Chittagong regional election officer Abdul Baten for the CCC election.
While elections to tghe major city corporations of the country were held in 2010 that of Dhaka city was stalled on various please. On November 29, 2011, the government split the DCC into DNCC and DSC, apparently to make win easier. But the environment has not been considered suitable even after the bifurcation.
On April 9, 2012, CEC Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad announced the election schedules for the split DCCs, fixing May 24, 2012 as voting date. But, a writ petition stalled the election process halfway through. Later, the court quashed the legal bar to the election on May 13, 2013.
But fresh complexities arose over the demarcation of the DSCC and DNCC as the Local Government Ministry proposed extending the peripheries of the city corporations.
On February 23 this year, the Local Government Ministry sent a letter to the EC requesting to take necessary steps to hold elections to the DSSC and DNCC as their demarcation complexities have been settled. The present initiative political observders believe has been taken to sift the attention of the people from the opposition movement to the elecgtion.
In an instant reaction policy making level leaders of the Bnp told journalists that city corporation elections are not more important than the agitation for inclusive polls under non-partisan government. – UNB
