Bangladesh is preparing for its first contested presidential election in 35 years, with lawmakers set to vote in parliament on Aug 20.

Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin, the election officer for the vote, will summon MPs to the parliamentary chamber for the election, Election Commission Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said on Tuesday.

The timetable sets Aug 13 for nominations, Aug 16 for scrutiny and Aug 18 as the deadline for withdrawals. Both the ruling BNP and the opposition have announced candidates.

President Mohammed Shahabuddin resigned on Jul 24 with nearly two years left in his term. Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad is serving as acting president.

How MPs Will Vote

The 349 MPs of the 13th Parliament, including 50 reserved-seat members, are the voters. The BNP has 247 MPs, making its candidate the likely winner despite the Opposition entering the race.

Voting will take place from 2pm to 5pm. MPs will remain in their seats while election officials deliver ballot papers to them.

Each ballot will have a counterfoil and a voting section. The counterfoil will carry the ballot’s serial number, the voter’s name and division number, along with the voter’s signature.

On the voting section, candidates’ names will be printed with space beside each for the voter to write their full name and sign.

Three ballot boxes will be placed in the chamber.

Counting and Result

After voting closes, the CEC will count the ballots and announce the preliminary result in parliament. The EC will then publish the result in the official gazette.

“Once voting ends, we will immediately conduct the counting there. There are 349 ballots. The CEC will announce in parliament how many valid votes were cast and the results for the candidates,” Akhtar said.