More than half of the polling stations for Bangladesh’s general election have been identified as “vulnerable”, as officials said 90 percent of them would be under CCTV surveillance, with many policemen wearing body cameras deployed in the capital, Dhaka.
Members of the Bangladesh Army check vehicles at a checkpoint a day ahead of national elections in Dhaka. (Reuters)Bangladesh will hold parliamentary elections on February 12 – the first since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August 2024 in mass nationwide protests.
Officials said the Election Commission’s security measures are based on risk assessment. “Security is being deployed based on an assessment of local sensitivities,” Election Commissioner Abul Fazal Mohammad Sanaullah told a press conference late on Tuesday.
EC officials said the election will witness the largest-ever deployment of law enforcement personnel and the most extensive use of technology in the country’s electoral history.
Sanaullah said the Election Commission expected law enforcement agencies to ensure a peaceful environment for voters during and after the polls.
He said the EC was largely satisfied with the current law and order situation and “we are in a better position now than at any time in the past”.
Inspector General of Police Baharul Alam said his comments came hours after they found 24,000 “high” or “moderate” risk polling stations out of about 43,000 polling stations across the country.
Police said they have given the list of vulnerable polling stations to the EC, which found that 1,614 out of 2,131 polling stations in Dhaka are vulnerable. But earlier the army said in a press conference that they have identified two centers of Dhaka city as ‘dangerous’.
Election Commissioner Brigadier General (Retd.) Abul Fazal Md. Sanaullah said on Tuesday that about 958,000 law enforcement personnel have been deployed across the country to ensure a free, fair and impartial national election and referendum on Thursday.
“Additionally, for the first time, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), drones and body-worn cameras are being used for election security,” he said at a press briefing on the overall preparations for the election at the capital’s Agargaon election building.
He said that voting will be held in 299 constituencies on Thursday. Voting in Sherpur-3 constituency has been postponed due to the death of one candidate.
A total of 2,098 Executive Magistrates and 657 Judicial Magistrates will serve in the filed elections.
The Election Commissioner said, “For the first time, UAVs, drones and body-worn cameras are being used for law enforcement. About 25,000 body-worn cameras will be deployed on the ground. Some of these will be for IP-based live feeds, while others will record locally. Moreover, more than 9% CCTV cameras have already been installed for continuous monitoring.”
He said that polling will continue from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm. However, the voters present at the polling station will be allowed to cast their vote by 4:30 pm.
He said that voting will be held in 42 thousand 659 centers.
EC data shows that first-time voters are about 3.58 percent of the total 1,27,700,597 voters.
Elections are being held simultaneously alongside a referendum on a complex 84-point reform package. The rivalry is mainly between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its one-time ally Jamaat-e-Islami.
The interim government of chief adviser Muhammad Yunus dissolved ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League last year and barred it from contesting elections.
A series of pre-election polls conducted over the past two months by consultancy firms, research firms and think tanks showed that the BNP was the frontrunner and its new chairman Tariq Rahman was in pole position to become the next prime minister.
Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government was ousted on August 5, 2024 in violent student-led street protests, known as the July Uprising.
