Steel ballot boxes to be used for local govt polls

---

The Election Commission (EC) will use opaque steel ballot boxes for all local government elections including the city corporation elections, election commissioner Sakhawat Hossain said Friday.
"The EC is set to utilise the sufficient number of ballot boxes it has in store during the forthcoming local elections to be held through 2008.
"Besides, we don't have any transparent ballot boxes at the moment," Sakhawat the bdnews24.com over telephone.
"The political parties talked about using transparent ballot boxes for national elections, not for local elections. The issue of using transparent or opaque ballot boxes at the national elections will be settled after discussion with the political parties."
"But one must consider the reality that transparent boxes have to be imported from abroad and therefore, they must be expensive and time-consuming to procure."
The commissioner also said three political parties had favoured steel ballot boxes for the polls in the electoral reform dialogues.
The work on preparing voter lists with photos is progressing in Rajshahi and Khulna city corporations areas, he said.
The EC will decide about holding the DCC and KCC elections after their voter registration is done, Sakhawat added.
The tenure of Dhaka City Corporation ended on May 14, Rajshahi City Corporation on June 16 and the Khulna City Corporation on June 26.