The Election Commission (EC) has moved to finalise an extensive panel of polling officials for the forthcoming 13th parliamentary election, giving priority to first-class officers as presiding officers and second-class officers as assistant presiding officers.

The plan comes as the commission braces to serve more than 130 million voters across an estimated 45,000 polling centres and 280,000 booths in the election expected to be held in early February 2026.

According to minutes of a recent meeting chaired by Election Commissioner Tahmida Ahmed on preparing the panel and supervising training programmes, experienced employees from government, semi-government, autonomous and private institutions will also be enlisted as polling officers. However, demonstrators will be excluded from presiding and assistant presiding roles.

If required, teachers, officers and staff from private universities will be brought in.

The EC will also document whether prospective officials have prior election experience, using a standardised form to collect lists from all relevant institutions through field-level election officers.

Polling centres and manpower needs

In the last parliamentary election, there were 119.7 million voters, 42,148 polling centres and 261,564 booths. Following the 2025 voter list update, the EC projects the electorate to swell to 127.87 million.

This would necessitate roughly 2,950 additional polling centres, bringing the total to about 45,098, and 19,000 extra booths, for a total of around 280,564.

Nearly 886,790 polling officials will be needed, with a further 10% added to the panel and 5% more trained as backup, raising the total number of trained personnel to approximately 931,131.

Training programme

The meeting resolved that core and “Training of Trainers” (TOT) sessions will commence two and a half to three months before the election schedule is declared. Core training will involve two-day sessions for EC Secretariat officers, conducted in two batches.

Under the TOT programme, around 3,600 officers from field offices and other departments will be trained in 140-150 batches.

Participants will include divisional commissioners, police commissioners, DIGs, deputy commissioners, superintendents of police, city corporation chief executives, returning officers, executive and judicial magistrates, district and upazila election officers, Ansar and VDP officers, Cantonment Board executives and other relevant officials.

The meeting decided that a standard form would be developed to collect information on officers and employees to be considered for election duties. It was also agreed that the Director General of the Electoral Training Institute would be included in the committee overseeing the process. In addition, the panel of polling officials will be prepared with a 10% increase in manpower, while training will be arranged for 5% more personnel than the estimated requirement.

The reporter can be reached at: [email protected]

Edited by M Munir Hossain