Shawdesh desk:

Former election commissioner Brigadier General (retired) M Shakhawat Hossain on Saturday said that he could not go outside as people ask him why they could not cast their votes in past two general elections in Bangladesh in 2014 and 2018.

He said that people also feared that they would not be able to cast their votes in the 12th parliamentary election, scheduled to be held on January 7 next year.

‘I cannot go outside as many people ask me whether they would be able to cast vote in the next election. They also told me that they could not cast votes in the past two elections,’ he said.

The former EC made the remarks at a roundtable organised by The Hunger Project in collaboration with Citizens for Good Governance, better known as SHUJAN at the YWCA auditorium at Mohammadpur in Dhaka.

SHUJAN secretary Badiul Alam Majumdar said that it was never too late to hold a dialouge as the government should take initiatives to create favourable environment for the election.