DHAKA, Dec 20: Bangladesh has deployed nearly 50,000 troops across the country to avert pre-poll violence ahead of landmark elections on December 29 to restore democracy, officials said on Saturday.

Armed forces spokesman Colonel Kabirul Islam Chowdhury said the soldiers were in each of the country’s 64 districts and would be working as “a striking force” to combat any violence ahead of the vote.

“They have already taken position. They will deter any violence and help conduct a smooth polls on Dec 29,” he said.

Senior armed forces official Salauddin Ahmed said about 48,000 troops had taken up their duties as of Saturday.

“One battalion of troops have been deployed in every district,” he said, adding the figures could go up.

The deployment comes just nine days before the impoverished country goes to the polls, which will hand over power to an elected government, ending a nearly two-year long rule by an army-backed administration.

Bangladesh has been run by a caretaker government, which in January 2007 cancelled elections and imposed a state of emergency after months of political violence brought the country to a standstill.

The government which lifted the emergency on Wednesday has pushed through key electoral reforms and compiled a photo-based voter list, which has eliminated some 12.7 million fake voters, in a bid to make the elections credible and fair.

It also launched a nationwide crackdown on corruption over the past two years, detaining politicians including ex-premiers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed to clean up the country’s corruption-infested dysfunctional politics.

Fakhruddin Ahmed, the head of the interim administration, told a European Union election observation mission his government had taken “all the measures to ensure peace during the polls”, the state-run BSS news agency said.

He said the Dec 29 elections would be free, fair and credible and they would be held in an “conducive environment”.

Ahmed also said his government would hand over power to a democratically elected government in the new year.

EU mission chief Alexander Graf Lambsdorff meanwhile told reporters in Dhaka he hoped “the armed forces deployed across the country would be used only for maintaining law and order”.

He said the pre-polls atmosphere has largely been peaceful and he was optimistic that polls would be held free from intimidation.

Bangladesh was ruled by Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Sheikh Hasina for 16 years after democracy was restored in 1991.

But bitter rivalries between the two women and widespread corruption have tarnished much of the democratic gains the young country has achieved.—AFP