The Election Commission (EC) on Monday finalized a project proposal of Tk8,711 crore for the purchase of 200,000 new electronic voting machines (EVMs).
The project will be sent to the Planning Commission next for approval.
Ashok Kumar Debnath, additional secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat, confirmed the matter after the meeting of the commission.
He said the expenditure behind the maintenance and training of manpower for EVMs has also been included in the Tk8,711 crore.
Earlier, the commission decided to use EVMs in 150 seats in the next parliamentary elections.
The current commission has the capacity to hold elections in 76 to 80 seats with Dhaka EVM machines, according to sources.
An initiative was taken to procure an additional 200,000 EVMs for voting to be held in more than 150 centres.
The EC secretariat said that in their previous meeting they were tasked to address informational technicalities which they fulfilled on Monday.
“The proposal seems appropriate to us. We have approved the project to be sent to the planning minister for further action. There will be a final decision on this.”
Election Commissioner Md Alamgir Hossain said that a meeting in this regard with the finance minister will be needed to address the manpower situation over the upcoming national polls.
The commission unveiled a roadmap for the next general election at a function held at the auditorium of the Nirbachan Bhaban on Wednesday.
"17 parties out of 29 ones who participated in the recent dialogue gave their opinion in favour of using of EVM while 12 of them voted against it. The Commission thinks that it will be rational to use EVM as most of the political parties want it. The use of EVM in 150 constituencies will be rational for balancing the opinion of all parties," said Election Commissioner Md Ahsan Habib.
