BANGLADESH

The Election Commission (EC) will get the fullest cooperation of the government when it uses electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the next general elections, the prime minister told parliament on Wednesday.

"The people have gladly accepted the new voting system (using EVM)," Sheikh Hasina said, in reply to a supplementary question from Sylhet-3 MP Mahmud Us Samad Chowdhury during her question session.

Appreciating the EC's initiative to use EVM in the modern voting management, she said, "EVM is a modern example in making the elections easy and transparent and in announcing the correct results within a short time.

"There have been instances where the use of EVM has been praised in many developed and developing countries of the world."

Parliament resumed its business at 6:30pm with speaker Abdul Hamid in the chair. The prime minister's question hour ran for more than half an hour at the start of the sitting.

After partial use of EVM in Narayanganj City Corporation and Chittagong City Corporation polls in 2010 and 2011, the EC used EVMs in all the polling centres in the Comilla City Corporation elections.

The Election Commission on several occasions announced that EVMs will be used in the next national elections but opposition BNP has been opposing its use from the beginning.