ISLAMABAD: Bangladesh's Election Commission said on Friday that all preparations for the country's general elections and referendum scheduled for Feb. 12 have been completed, with the largest security deployment in the nation's history in place.
"Now there is no preparation left except for the voters to go to the polling stations and exercise their right to vote," Election Commissioner Md Anwarul Islam Sarker told the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) news agency in an interview.
Sarker said ballot papers have reached 116 constituencies, with the remaining to be delivered by Friday. EC Secretariat Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said ballots had to be reprinted in some areas following last-minute court orders reinstating candidates, causing minor delays.
Security arrangements include deploying 900,000 law enforcement personnel, with the army remaining in the field for seven days before and after the polls, and Ansar paramilitary forces for eight days. Some 1,050 executive magistrates will operate mobile courts from Feb. 8 to 14, BSS reported.
The 13th Jatiya Sangsad (parliament) elections will see 2,034 candidates contesting across 300 constituencies, though voting in Sherpur-3 has been cancelled following the death of a Jamaat-e-Islami candidate.
According to BSS, the commission has registered 127.7 million voters for the polls and referendum, with voting to be held at 42,779 polling stations nationwide.
Fifty-one parties are contesting, alongside over 250 independents, while more than 800,000 officials and around 56,000 observers will oversee the process.
Over 1.5 million voters, including expatriates, have registered for postal voting.
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