Staff Reporter:
Voting in the Presidential election will be held at the Session Hall of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban (JS) on August 20, Election Commission (EC) Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said yesterday.
“Voting will continue uninterrupted from 2 pm to 5 pm on August 20 . . . The extended voting period has been set to allow for any possible delay in the arrival of a member of parliament,” he told journalists after a preparatory meeting with the Parliament Speaker on the ‘Presidential Election’ at the EC office in city’s Agargaon area.
The EC secretary said the MPs would remain seated at their respective seats in the Session Hall, while election officials appointed by the EC would deliver ballot papers to them.
“Each ballot paper will have two parts – a stump and the main ballot. The counterfoil will contain the candidate’s serial number, the voter’s name, division number and a space for signature,” he said.
The names of the contesting candidates will be printed on the right side of the main ballot. The voting MP will write the full name of the candidate of his or her choice in the designated space beside the can-didate’s name and sign the ballot.
Three transparent ballot boxes will be placed inside the Session Hall for the convenience of the MPs, and they will be able to cast their votes in any one of the boxes, Akhtar said.
He said vote counting would begin immediately after the voting ends at 5 pm in the presence of the bal-lot boxes inside the Session Hall.
A ballot counting team, initially comprising four or five members, will sort and count the ballot papers.
Of the total 349 ballots, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), acting as the Election Officer, will announce the number of valid and invalid ballots and the votes secured by each candidate.
The final result will subsequently be officially announced by the EC Secretariat through a gazette notifi-cation.
Akhtar Ahmed said arrangements would be made for live telecasting of the voting process from the Ses-sion Hall, while a designated area would be provided for journalists as well.
The EC will issue special identity cards to 20 officials involved in the election process, he added.
