Prime Minister and Leader of the House Sheikh Hasina today said that the government had taken all-out effective measures to hold all the elections till date in a free, fair and peaceful manner."In all elections the government has been extending all-out cooperation including deploying law enforcement agencies in line with the demand of the Election Commission," she said.The prime minister said this replying to a starred tabled question from Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal MP Nazmul Haque Prodhan (Panchagarh-1) during her scheduled question-answer session in parliament this evening.She said following the Article 126 of the Constitution, it is the responsibility of the Executive Division to extend cooperation to the Election Commission to discharge its duties properly. "The government or the Executive Division has extended all sorts of cooperation to all the elections held so far in line with the demand of the Election Commission," she said.To make the activities of the Election Commission more dynamic, Sheikh Hasina mentioned that the present government has established the own building of Election Commission, built the own building of the Election Training Institute to enhance the skills and efficiency of the officials and employees of EC alongside constructing own buildings of each EC office.The prime minister said that every office of the Election Commission has been brought under its own network and a Tk 1,636 crore project was undertaken to provide improved smart cards to the people of the country instead of current paper-laminated national identity cards.She said that the work on providing improved smart national ID cards was introduced on October 2 last year in a bid to provide such cards to country`s nine crore voters in phases.Sheikh Hasina also said that the present government had taken initiatives to hold the local government body polls on party basis through amending the concerned laws to make those polls free, fair, peaceful, competitive and participatory."Registered major political parties took part in each of those elections," she added.
Source : BSS