Shawdesh Desk:

The Election Commission has decided not to procure anymore Electronic Voting Machines as over two-thirds of the EVMs purchased for ten years went out of order in half of their lifetime, incurring the public exchequer a loss of around Tk 2,500 crore.

Out of 1,50,000 EVMs, 1,10,000 have already been out of order and the remaining 40,000 are also on the verge of becoming unusable, officials involved in managing EVMs said.

The EVMs, each bought for Tk 2,35,000, had been stored without much care, they said, adding that there was no arrangement for storing the machines when the project was initiated.

As a result, EVMs were kept in the offices of field officers without proper care, they said.

The project officials said that the EC was not even interested in repairing the damaged EVMs.

EVM project director Colonel Syed Rakibul Hasan acknowledged that some 1 lakh EVMs had been damaged because proper maintenance was not possible.

‘It is normal that the EVMs will be damaged early if not maintained properly,’ he said, adding that the project is ending in June and he doesn’t know if it will be extended or not.

Before the 11th parliamentary elections, the then-KM Nurul Huda-led commission hastily decided to purchase ‘high-quality’ EVMs and started buying them even before the project money was released.

The EC initially bought 80,000 EVMs, defying protests from various political parties and civil society.

To buy 2,20,000 EVMs, a Tk 4,000 crore project was initiated at that time.

Later, the Huda-led commission set a target of holding polls in 150 constituencies through EVMs, and to implement the plan, it purchased a total of 1,50,000 EVMs from Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory in phases.

According to EC officials, the cost of each machine is Tk 2,35,000, which is several times higher than the EVMs used in neighbouring India.

The EC failed to implement its plan in 2018 to hold the polls in 150 constituencies amid protests from political parties, including the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Finally, elections were held through EVMs in six parliamentary constituencies on December 30, 2018.

The project officials said that the EVMs had to be stored at a certain temperature and humidity, while the existing storeroom did not have this arrangement. As a result, the EVMs gradually decayed.

The incumbent commission, led by Kazi Habibul Awal, also made a move to hold the 12th parliamentary polls through EVMs in at least 150 Jatiya Sangsad seats.

For this reason, the second EVM project worth Tk 9,000 crore was taken up by the commission.

However, due to the financial crisis, the government rejected the EC proposal.

Initially, the EVMs were kept in the basement of the Agargaon Nirbachan Bhaban before being sent to the fields.

A problem arose when they needed to be transported from one place to another amid increased transport costs, EC officials said.

Following these complications, it was decided to keep EVMs in the field offices. But no field office has enough room to keep EVMs, they said.

At the end of 2022, the EC officials raised concern in a meeting that termites and cockroaches were destroying the EVM machines in the upazila election offices.

The commission launched an on-site investigation into allegations of EVMs getting damaged by termites and cockroaches.

Asked, election commissioner Md Alamgir told New Age that they could do nothing about maintaining EVMs without a fund allocation.

He also said that the commission had no plans to buy new EVMs in the future.

Introduced in 2010, EVMs were used in various local government elections.

The then Election Commission, led by ATM Shamsul Huda, had used them in the city corporation polls but not in any parliamentary election.

In 2012, the EC, headed by Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad, also kept EVMs out of national polls.