The Election Commission will hold mock voting using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) at all voting centres of Dhaka on Thursday, ahead of the upcoming Dhaka North and South city corporation elections scheduled for February 1.

People will exercise their voting rights to elect city mayors and councillors with EVMs at all centres for the first time in the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) elections.

The mock voting will take place from 12:00 noon to 7:00pm at all voting centres, according to a statement issued by the EC today. 

Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda will visit Dhaka Residential Model College polling centre while Election Commissioner Mahbub Talukdar will visit Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Government Girls’ High School polling centre on the day.  

The EC has prepared at least 35,000 EVMs for the city polls, and has decided to deploy two army personnel in each of the 2,468 polling centres to operate the EVMs, according to the EC statement.

However, the army personnel will provide only “technical support”, it added.

At each of the 14,600 polling booths, one machine will be used for voting while another will be on standby.

There are 1,318 polling centres in DNCC and 1150 in DSCC to serve some 54 lakh voters.

Earlier on January 28, the EC held EVM exhibitions at all polling centres.

The authorities are airing TV commercials, running ads in newspapers and holding awareness programmes at schools to familiarise voters with EVMs.