The voting of Union Council election opened in 718 union councils in the first phase on Tuesday morning.

The balloting began at about 8:00am and will continue till 4:00pm without any break.

Election to the lowest tier of the local government body is going to be held along the party lines for the first time, although only for the chairman post.

As many as 14 political parties out of 40 registered ones are participating in the first phase polls, providing nearly 1800 chairman candidates out of over 3000. The remaining 1200-plus are independent candidates.

Candidates from two major political parties ruling Awami League and its arch rival BNP start as frontrunners in the election. But BNP has no chairman candidate in some 120 UPs whereas AL in only one UC.

Fifty-four chairman candidates, all from the ruling party, have already been elected unopposed finding no rival against their respective post. They comprise 32 candidates in Bagerhat, 10 in Madaripur, 3 in Gopalganj, two each in Bhola and Brahmanbaria, and one each in Khulna, Satkhira, Barisal, Jhalakati and Munshiganj.

In the first phase election, some 1.19 crore voters will be eligible to exercise their franchise under nearly 7,000 polling stations.

A total of five magistrates - four executive and one judicial magistrate- remain deployed in each Upazila to curb violation of election code of conduct. More than 1,80,000 security members -- police, Rab, BGB, Coast Guard and Ansar-- remain deployed in election areas.

Alongside the magistrates, three teams of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and three teams of Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) are working as mobile and striking forces in each Upazila to maintain electoral environment for the four days.

Meanwhile, a 19-member security team comprising five policemen, two Battalion Ansar men with arms and 12 embedded Ansar/VDP memberswill protect each vulnerable polling centre on the balloting day. In case of each ‘normal’ polling station, the number of the team members will be 17 due to lower chance of violence, with two less policemen.

As part of the first phase election, 718 UPs are going to polls on Tuesday, while 11 UCs of Nagarpur of Tangail on 23 March and two UC of Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar on 27 March.

As per factsheet provided by the EC, some 3000 candidates for chairman posts are in the election race, in addition to 7,500 women candidates for reserved seats and over 25,000 contenders for member posts in the phase.

The EC so far announced the election schedule for the first three phases as part of its plan to arrange elections in 4275 out of the country’s 4546 UPs in six phases by June.