Bangladesh correcting voters' list ahead of poll
Source: Reuters
(Adds fresh protest plans, quotes) DHAKA, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The Bangladesh Election Commission began a week-long effort on Friday to overhaul the list of voters, which an election watchdog says contains millions of erroneous names, ahead of January's parliamentary elections. The Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) said last week, following a sample survey of voters, that the current list had more than 12 million names entered in error or by repetition. NDI's Bangladesh representative Owen Lippert met election officials twice last week to discuss the matter. Election Commission secretary Abdur Rashid Sarkar later said the commission would seek NDI's assistance while updating the list. "This time we hope the country will have a correct voters' list," an NDI spokesman said on Friday. Sheikh Hasina, leader of a 14-party alliance and a key player in next month's election, on Friday asked her followers to closely monitor the drive to correct the voters' list. "Go to all election offices across the country ... to make sure that only genuine voters are enlisted and ghost voters are eliminated," Hasina told her followers on Friday. Her party is also demanding removal of election officials over allegations of bias towards its main rival. On Thursday, the election commission announced a new election schedule, changing the polling date to January 23 from Jan. 21. Accordingly, the last day for filing nominations is now set for Dec. 21 and the deadline for withdrawing from the race is on Dec. 28. Both Hasina's alliance and the rival four-party combine led by Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have accepted the revised schedules. Khaleda ended her five-year tenure as prime minister late in October, handing power to an interim government, headed by President Iajuddin Ahmed, to oversee the polls. She and Hasina are bitter political foes who refuse to even speak to each other. They have alternated as the Bangladesh premier for the past 15 years. MORE PROTESTS THREATENED Hasina asked alliance leaders at a meeting on Thursday to immediately start preparations for the election. But she threatened to lay a siege again around the presidential palace if Ahmed failed to remove election officials accused of a bias towards Khaleda. "An election cannot be be fair and impartial if biased and controversial officials are still there," Hasina said. The BNP urged the administration not to bow to the demands of the Awami League which, it said, was trying to avoid the election fearing a heavy defeat. "People won't vote them for their anarchic activities that claimed many lives and damaged public properties over the past one month," BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said. The Awami alliance has led violent protests and blockades, over the past few weeks in which at least 44 people have been killed and hundreds injured.
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