Stop using EVM: BNP to EC

Casting confusion over holding of a free and fair election to Dhaka north and south city corporations using Electronic Voting Machines, BNP today urged the Election Commission to stop e-voting process.

“It’s a great concern for us as the Election Commission has taken a stance against people to ensure the victory of the ruling party-backed candidates by using EVMs in the elections,” BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said today.

While addressing a press conference at the party’s Nayapaltan headquarters, Rizvi cited several flaws of using EVMs in elections and said EVMs is a 28-year-old non-transparent technology, which is not helpful for democracy.

The method has been used in elections in different countries including Netherland, Ireland, Germany, Italy and USA on trial basis, but in the face of wide range of criticism and protest, the process has been stopped from the countries except for India, he said.

According to the experts, the election result is possible to be tempered easily by using the EVMs and its all modules are available in the market, Rizvi said.

The EVMs can no longer be an acceptable process ensuring people’s voting rights, the BNP leader said smelling the government’s ill motive being the e-voting.

Not only BNP, the country’s most of the political parties, election observers equivocally described the EVMs as a tool of manipulating the election results, Rizvi said.

Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda yesterday said that they are determined to hold fair elections in the city elections using EVMs.

“We will use the EVMs so that people can cast their votes in a free and fair manner,” he said while talking to reporters at the commission’s regional election office in Barishal.

Rizvi further said, “The Election Commission has been turned into a puppet, worthless and corrupt organisation only to serve the government interest.”