DMP imposes media restrictions at polling stations.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Saturday asked journalists and election observers not to stay in a polling station for long and said that not more than five journalists would be allowed to visit a station together on the polling day. Addressing a news briefing, DMP commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia said that no accredited journalists and observers would be allowed to stay in a single polling station for long as per the Election Commission instructions. ‘Accredited journalists and observers cannot stay at any polling station for long. They will observe, move around and leave the stations,’ said Asaduzzaman. The DMP said that accredited journalists and observers could visit several polling stations and stay there for a few minutes. Since a good number of journalists and observers will be in the field on the election day, there was hardly any possibility for election misconducts. The DMP chief said 1,429 polling stations were ‘important’ and the rest 553 were ‘usual’. When contacted, Election Commission secretary Sirazul Islam told New Age that the commission had given no such instructions to the DMP.

‘We did not give them any such instructions,’ said the secretary. He, however, shared the DMP’s view that journalists should not stay in a polling station for long for the sake of smooth balloting. He also said the commission did not give instructions to the DMP on how many journalists would be allowed to visit a polling station together. Election working group director Md Abdul Alim said that the Election Commission should allow journalists and observers to observe as stationary observers. The more journalists and observers would observe the electoral process, the more the polling would be transparent, he said. An intelligence official of police, preferring not to be named, said that most of the polling centers were ‘risky’, but Dhaka South city was ‘riskier’. The official said that most of the public universities and colleges were located in Dhaka South city area, which was a cause for concern. He said that Mirpur was the ‘riskiest’ area in Dhaka North city.

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