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24 out of 38 parties submit poll expenses

BNP, Jamaat, many others fail to produce incomplete reports; AL statement not made available to media

Shakhawat Liton
Twenty-four out of 38 political parties that contested the December 29 parliamentary election last year submitted their poll expenditure reports to the Election Commission (EC) yesterday, the last day for submission of those.
But almost all of them including BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami came up with incomplete reports which did not meet the legal requirements like disclosing the amount of money received as donation to their electoral fund, EC Secretariat officials said.
BNP's one-page report is more incomplete than those of other parties, and it did not give details of its expenditure of Tk4.49 crore, Tk 1 lakh less than the ceiling.
The ruling Awami League (AL) submitted a 38-page expenditure report
EC officials gave journalists access to reports of all the parties except AL, and refused to give any information on its report.
The AL report was kept in the office of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda, who was not in office yesterday.
Contacted, Election Commissioner Brig Gen (retd) M Sakhawat Hossain said AL's report is under the CEC's custody, and he has nothing to do with it right now.
SK Habibullah, member of finance sub-committee of ALelection committee,
told journalists that their party nominated 263 candidates and spent around Tk 4 crore for theparliamentarypolls.lt spent around Tk 1.50 crore for electoral campaign.
Habibullah, who submitted AL's expenditure report to the EC, said the party had collected around Tk 2.50 crore from the sale of its nomination papers. He however did not say whether the party had received donation to its electoral fund from other sources.
BNP's report, signed by party Secretary General Khandaker Delwar Hossain, only contained some major heads of its polls expenditure, and no information about its electoral fund.
The report said the party nominated 259 candidates and gave Tk 1.20 crore to its nominees. But it did not give the names of candidates who received the money. The BNP report said Tk 1.84 crore was spent for publicity, Tk 63 lakh for transport, Tk 13 lakh for public rallies and Tk 18 lakh for party workers.
Officials in the EC Secretariat mentioned that BNP leaders who submitted the report said they would give detailslater.
Jamaat’s report said the party that fielded 38 candidates spent I k 74.72 lakh. It gave Tk 55.95 lakh to party candidates and spent Tk 13.90 lakh for publicity and Tk2.59 lakh for transport.
Jatiya Party led by HM Ershad did not submit its expenditure report till 5:00pm yesterday.
Asked about the EC's next course of action regarding the parties which did not submit reports, Sakhawat Hossain said the commission would send letters today asking them again to submit those in next 30 days.
The EC will scrutinise the expenditure reports and decide whether those meet the requirements.
As per Representation of the People Order (RPO), copies of the reports will be pub-fished in the EC's website.
The RPO provides that a political party that contests parliamentary polls will have to submit its election expenditure report within 90 days of publication of polls results in the official gazette. The report must mention the amount of money the party received as donation.
Results of the ninth parliamentary election were published in the official gazette on January 1, and the last date for submission of expenditure repo rts was M arch 31.
If parties fail to submit reports even in the 30-day extended timeframe, the EC might give another 15 days to do so with payment of fine. And finally, the EC may cancel registration of partiers that do not come up with expenditure reports
Registration with the EC is mandatory for a party to contest parliamentary elections.
rhe provision was made in sweeping electoral reforms before the ninth parliamentary polls to bring accountability and transparency in political parties' collection of election funds and their expenditure.
The parties are submitting their expenditure reports to the EC for the first time ever.