40,000 EVM unfit to use:EC

Staff Reporter :
The Election Commission (EC) has got technical glitch in about 40,000 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) as there are unfit to use in next parliamentary election which is slated to be held in January 2024.
EVM Project Director (PD) Colonel Sayed Rakibul Hasan informed this to the newsmen on Wednesday at his office in EC Headquarters in capital’s Agargoan area.
Before that a meeting was held on the issue of to know the EVM update situation.
Rakibul Hasan said after checking the EVMs, about 40,000 EVMs have got technically problematic and unable to use in polls. The unfit EVMs were sent to Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory (BMTF) for repairing. Besides, fit 1,010,000 EVMs are ready to use in any election. The EVM PD said the project for new EVM procurement has cancelled due financial crisis. For that EC has made plan about using EVM by its existing machine.
“EC on a plan to use what amount of EVM it has. We are also trying to find out further EVM will get any technical fault or not,” he said.
Rakibul Hasan said there are about 1,010,000 EVMs in EC’s stock. Of them 70, 0000 in BMTF factory and others 40,000 in another warehouse.
He claims that after using in polls, the EVMs were not maintaining properly. As a result, a certain number of EVMs got unfit to use in polls.
It is to mentioned that during last parliament polls in 2018, the EC had bought 150,000 EVMs by costing Tk 3,825 crore. But lack of adequate management a significant number of EVM become useless.
In the 11th parliamentary polls six constituency’s election were conducted by EVM. Besides, in last five years EC has used EVM in city corporation polls and most of local body elections.
Now EVMs are stored in more than 40 temporary warehouses in different districts of the country including 10 regional offices. EC found defects in 40,000 EVMs after testing for the last four months.