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Schedule for municipal, city elections today

Shakhawat Liton
/After a break of over a year and a half, the Election Commission (EC) resumes a forma) electoral process today by announcing schedules for polls in four city corporations and nine municipalities.
According to its plans, the next few months will be months of ballots with more local government elections including those for upazila parishads before the all-important ninth parliamentary polls in December.
Meanwhile, the home ministry has finalised a notification to be issued this afternoon, relaxing the emergency powers rules (EPR). The amended EPR will facilitate electioneering during the state of emergency by allowing processions and rallies, sources in the ministry said.
In October 2006, the EC stopped holding local elections to prepare for the ninth parliamentary polls then slated for January 22,2007.
But in the wake of political turmoil, President lajuddin Ahmed
on January 11 promulgated the state of emergency and cancelled the election.
Though terms of most of the local governments have long expired, the commission did not move until recently to hold any polls, citing the state of emergency and absence of a fair voter list.
According to the schedules that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda will announce this afternoon, polls in four city corporations--Rajshahi, NEWS
Khulna, Barisa) and Sylhet--and nine municipalities--Manikganj Sadar, Chuadanga Sadar, Shariatpur Sadar, Naohata in Rajshahi, Dupchanchiya in Bogra, Sripur in Gazipur, Phulbaria in Mymensingh, Golapganj in Sylhet and Sitakunda in Chittagong--might be held by the end of July or early August.
After these, the EC will con duct election in Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and some other municipalities in September. Then it will organise polls for 482 upazila parishads in phases from October.
On completion of the parliamentary election in the third week of December, the commission will begin holding polls for over 4,000 union parishads from mid-Januaryorearly February.
Elections in the remaining upazilas and municipalities will be slotted in between the union parishad polls, said senior officials at the EC Secretariat.
The EC in its electoral roadmap unveiled on July 15 last year announced that it would start holding local government
polls in January 2008 and continue till the parliamentary polls in December.
But it had to back down on the plans due to the state of emergency and voter listing.
Terms of the Dhaka, Rajshahi and Khulna city corporations ended in May 2007 while those of Barisal and Sylhet in November and December the same year.
Mayors of the city corporations excepting the DCC have been detained for quite a long time now on charges of corruption while many of the ward commissioners have been on the run from law enforcers.
Major political parties have been opposing the plans for holding local government polls before the parliamentary election, fearing further delay in organising the latter.
Both the caretaker government and the EC however have maintained that parliamentary election is their top priority.
The commission, reconstituted in February 2007, has been saying that city corporation and municipality polls would give it a chance to see how the new electoral rules work.