CEC Awal to hold press conference on resignation on Thursday

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kazi Habibul Awal will hold a press conference on Thursday on the matter of his resignation.

The press conference will be held at 12pm.

When asked whether he would resign, he told reporters at the Nirbachan Bhaban in Dhaka's Agargaon this afternoon: "I will hold a press conference on the matter tomorrow (Thursday)."

When asked when he would meet the President, he said he will go to meet the President on Thursday.

The Kazi Habibul Awal-led commission has maintained silence since Sheikh Hasina was ousted on August 5 last. It didn’t take any initiative to conduct any local body election in the last one month.

However, the CEC wrote an article that was published in a Bengali daily on August 24 claiming that the Election Commission is in a crisis amid the successful post-revolution constitutional situation.

The current commission drew strong criticism from various quarters including BNP and other political parties for holding the lopsided general election on January 7, 2024, which created the way for Awami League to go to power for the fourth consecutive term.

Different local body elections held under his commission were also questioned by different political parties.

On February 27, 2022, former secretary Kazi Habibul Awal took the charge of the Chief Election Commissioner, while four others -- former district and sessions judge Rashida Sultana, Brig Gen (retd) Md Ahsan Habib Khan, and former secretaries Md Alamgir and Anisur Rahman, took the charges as election commissioners.  

The current commission was constituted through a search committee for the first time under a law mandated by the constitution. The search committee held a series of meetings with eminent citizens and civil society representatives and sought names from the registered political parties for the posts.

A number of political parties including Awami League gave the names, but BNP and some other political parties didn’t send any name to the search committee.