Agency

The Election Commission will not announce the date for the national elections until the ongoing voter registration is finished, the top polls official said on Sunday.

From March, people will have to wait until September to get the election schedule, the first tangible step for holding general elections, he added.

'We all have to wait about seven more months for the national elections,' the chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, told the news agency in an exclusive interview on Sunday.

'It would not be fair to announce an election date until the final voter roll is completed,' said Huda who heads the three-member EC. He, however, confirmed that the polls to city corporations and municipalities, two local government bodies, would start from April.

Mohmmad Sahul Hussain, a retired bureaucrat, and M Sakhawat Hussain, a retired brigadier general, were appointed two commissioners in February last year. Huda said the registration for the photo-attached electoral roll would be complete by June and the printing would finish by September.

The EC has registered more than 30 million out of 80 million voters. But, he added, they would not take measures to hold polls to the union parishad, the lowest tier of the local government. 'Polls to the Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal and Sylhet city corporations and seven municipalities will be held in April,' the CEC said.

He said the Dhaka City Corporation elections would take place in May. 'The polls to upazila parishad must be held this year. But I cannot say whether it will take place simultaneously with the general elections or before parliamentary elections,' said Huda, who joined as the CEC on February 5, 2007.

The roadmap that the EC announced last year sets the general elections by December. On having talks with the BNP, two factions of which are fighting a legal battle for representing the party to the EC, the CEC said, 'I hope the court will decide the mainstream BNP and we will sit with them as per the directive from the court.'

The EC has invited the reformist faction of the BNP, led by its secretary general HafizUddin Ahmed, to talks on national polls. But the conformist group, led by Khandakar Delwar Hossain, challenged the EC's decision in the High Court. 'We are yet to have talks with the BNP.

If talks with the BNP are delayed, we will sit with other political parties for a second time,' he said. He said they would recommend the amendment to the People's Representation Order, 2007 after finishing the talks with political parties. The EC had already had talks with 15 political parties including the Awami League, Jatiya Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami.

On registration of the political parties by June, Huda said the political parties needed to bring some changes to the manifesto if they wanted to get registered by the EC-fixed June deadline. 'We will allow them (political parties) to get registered with the EC until the declaration of the election schedules if necessary,' the CEC said.

The army-controlled government of Fakhruddin Ahmed early last year restructured the controversy-dogged main polls office headed by MA Aziz and five other commissioners who had faced charges of political partisanship.