Corruption allegations
The election commission led by CEC KM Nurul Huda was criticized by the main opposition BNP and civil society because of its incapability to hold fair elections in city corporations polls. [8] Though the opposition made several allegations, none of them were investigated.
In the lead-up to the 2018 Bangladeshi general election, the election commission planned a series of activities including purchasing of electronic voting machines (EVM) which raised the eyebrows of many observers, and corruption allegations started arising.
High-priced EVM purchase
The election commissioned purchased electronic voting machines (EVM) at a price of 234,373 BDT per piece where similar types of machines were procured by their Indian counterpart at a price of 21,250 BDT, almost 11 times lower than that of Bangladesh's paid amount. [9] In 2011, Bangladesh's election body purchased 700 EVMs at a price of BDT 46,501 each from Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory Ltd, which was almost four times lower than the price of EVMs bought in 2018. [10]
The EVM used in India also has Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) which was not included in Bangladesh's purchased ones, ignoring the recommendation of the technical committee led by Jamilur Reza Choudhury.
One of the four election commissioners, Mahbub Talukdar walked out from the election commissioners' meeting protesting the move to change the RPO to buy and use the high priced EVMs in August 2018. [11]
Honorarium for imaginary speeches
Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda, his four deputies, election commission secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed, an additional secretary and two joint secretaries of the commission took 20 million BDT fees for "special speeches" as "special speakers" at the training programs for the 11th national parliamentary election and the Upazila polls. In addition to that Helal Uddin Ahmed drew 4.7 million BDT, an abnormally high amount, for the role of ‘course consultant’ alone. [12]
The list of "special speakers" include chief election commissioner (CEC) KM Nurul Huda, the four election commissioners Mahbub Talukdar, Rafiqul Islam, Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury, and Kabita Khanam, secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed, additional secretary Mokhlesur Rahman and two joint secretaries Abul Kasem and Kamrul Hasan.
According to the commission's secretariat records collected by Bangladesh's daily Prothom Alo, 9 ‘special speakers’ delivered talks in 520 places of the country in just a matter of 18 days, from 7 to 24 December 2018. According to the records and the documents each ‘special speaker’ had to speak at 14 different places on a single day in-person which is nearly impossible for them. [13]
Former election commissioner M Sakhawat Hossain said:
There has never been such costly training in the history of the election commission. In our time, the CEC, other commissioners and I spoke at training programs all over the country, but we didn’t take any allowance for this. The secretary too spoke, but took no payment either. That was the norm. What has taken place this time is blatant mismanagement and irregularity. Those involved must take responsibility for their actions. [14]
Recruitment without monetary transparency
In November 2019, the election commissioner Mahbub Talukdar made an allegation against his colleagues of misappropriating 40.8 million BDT during the recruitment of staff for the election commission against 339 vacant posts. According to commissioner Mahbub, a huge amount of money was given to a faculty of the University of Dhaka which was approved by the CEC KM Nurul Huda but there were no records whatsoever of how many examiners were paid how much money. [15] He further claimed that the election commission was kept in dark about the examination, the recruitment committee did not know the details of the payment and the evaluation of the examinees was under serious question. [16]
