Changes coming in appointment of returning, presiding officers: CEC

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) AMM Nasir Uddin has announced that the Election Commission (EC) is adopting new strategies for appointing election officials in an effort to curb irregularities during voting.

He stated that a major change is being introduced in the appointment of presiding officers. In some cases, instead of district commissioners (DCs), the Election Commission's own officials will be appointed as returning officers.

The CEC shared these details in an exclusive interview with BBC Bangla.

For the first time, the Election Commission has taken the initiative to allow expatriate Bangladeshis from various countries to vote.

After considering four alternative methods, the EC has finalized postal ballots as the voting method for expatriates.

The CEC mentioned that expatriates willing to vote in the upcoming national elections will need to register in advance. Only registered expatriate Bangladeshi voters will be able to participate via postal ballots for the first time.

He said, “We are now going to build an online platform to collect people’s options and treat them as expatriate voters. Later, we will send them ballot papers. This process will be quite costly. We’ve already spoken with international courier services like DHL and FedEx.”

According to him, it will cost around BDT 5,000 per vote using these services. In response to whether the EC will bear such high costs for expatriate voting, Nasir Uddin said this is the charge of DHL and FedEx. If the postal ballots are sent through the government postal service, the cost will be around BDT 700 per voter. The postal service has agreed to make special arrangements to ensure speedy delivery.

He further explained, “From the announcement of the election schedule to nomination papers and symbol allocation, we get only about 12 days between printing ballot papers and election day. So within this short window, we must send and receive the postal ballots. There is an estimated system loss of around 24%, which could be higher in our context. However, we are trying to bring a sizeable number of expatriates into the voting process.”

Highlighting the changes in the appointment of presiding officers, the CEC said, “In previous elections, some presiding and polling officers aided in rigging. We will avoid appointing such individuals as much as possible.”

He added that EC’s district officers are already collecting information on such individuals and the process of excluding them has begun. “We are also considering assigning responsibilities to bank officers since they have not been part of the government machinery or involved in election rigging.”

When asked whether EC officials will replace DCs and divisional commissioners as returning officers, the CEC responded, “The Reform Commission has also made this proposal. EC officials have never performed such duties in national elections before, although they have served as returning officers in many city corporation elections.”

He clarified that not all EC officials will automatically be appointed as returning officers. Their qualifications will be a key consideration.

He concluded, “We will appoint our officials in some cases based on their qualifications. But the condition is—they must be competent officers. In other cases, we’ll still rely on district commissioners. Only those deemed qualified after scrutiny will be appointed as returning officers.”