A two-day long mock voting for training of voters on using electronic
voting machine ended Monday in two centers under ward-16 of Barisal
City Corporation.
After casting vote by EVM the voters expressed mixed reaction to the
journalists.
Mock voting to train 2,447 male voters in using EVM held at Barisal
Zilla School center of the ward-16 and 326 voters on Sunday and 201
voters on Monday cast their mock votes using EVM, said AL Amin Sarwar,
presiding officer of the center.
On other hand 455 out of 1,734 female voters of Commercial College
center in the same ward participated in mock voting by using EVM, said
Shakhawat Hossain, presiding officer of the center.
Abdul Mannan, Barisal Sadar upazila election officer, said ward no. 16
consisted with total 4,181 voters including 6 polling booths for male
voters at Zilla School and 5 polling booths booth in Commercial
College centers of the ward.
Asma Akter, a service holder said only two-day long arrangements for
training voters in using EVM was not sufficient.
Abdur Razzak, new voter and student, said that he felt proud to cast
his vote using EVM.
Kamrul Hasan Ratan, a councilor candidate of that ward, said he have
doubt over the performances of voters in using EVM voting.
Shahin Sikdar, another councilor candidate of the same ward said the
system is fine, but it need more time to aware the voters.
Md. Mujibur Rahman, Returning Officer of the BCC election 2013, said
they are hopeful over the success of voting using EVM.
He said earlier a two-day training on using electronic voting machine
and electoral rules and processes held on Friday and Saturday at
Barisal Zilla School Center’
Total 1,942 election officials including presiding, assistant
presiding, polling, and election commission officials participated in
the training.
Khondkar Mizanur Rahman, director general Electoral Training
Institute, who led the training, said EVM in at least one ward in each
of the four city corporation election would be used as it proved
successful earlier in different city corporation elections.
Fear and anxiety about EVM would be wiped out after mock voting, the
DG ETI hoped.
The trained officials after the training hoped to use the EVM
efficiently and conduct the poll under free fair procedure.
EC already started propagations with loud speakers, leaflet
distribution, posturing about using EVM in that ward and
demonstrations about voting by EVM would be continued till last
dateline for election propagation, informed returning officer Mujibur
Rahman.
The centers were chosen on basis of the number of voters, easy
accessibility to the vote centers, educational qualification and
professional status of the voters of those centers, he added.
Barisal City Corporation has 100 permanent with 614 booths and 3
temporary vote centers with 37 booths for casting votes of 2,10,849
voters including 1,07,625 male and 1,03.224 female voters.
(Our Correspondent)
