The voting will kick off at 8am and continue till 4pm without any break.
The Election Commission has completed all necessary preparation to arrange the election to 78 upazilas in 12 districts, said EC additional Secretary Mukhlesur Rahman at a pre-election briefing in the Nirbachon Bhaban.
The size of the electorate in the 78 upazilas is 1,42,48,850 (1 crore 42 lakh 48 thousand 850) under 5,847 polling stations across 12 districts: Panchagarh, Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Jamalpur, Netrakona, Sunamganj, Habiganj, Sirajganj, Joypurhat, Natore and Rajshahi.
Some 207 chairman candidates, 386 vice chairman candidates and 249 woman vice chairman candidates are contesting positions up for grabs in 78 upazilas.
Besides, 15 chairman candidates, six vice chairman contenders and seven woman vice chairman contestants have already been elected without a vote being cast, in the absence of any valid candidate to oppose them.
The Public Administration announced a public holiday in the upazilas for Sunday.
Additional security including police, Rab, BGB, and Coast Guard remain deployed in the election areas since Friday. They are slated to remain so till Tuesday.
Besides, a judicial magistrate was deployed in each upazila, and an executive magistrate for every three Union Parishads for the five days to punish any violations of the polls code.
A security team comprising of 15-16 members drawn from police, Ansar and VDP will guard each polling station on the day.
On February 3, the Election Commission announced the election schedule for 87 upazilas in Phase I of the 5th Upazila elections. Later the polls to six were postponed on different grounds. Besides, the candidates against all the Union Parishad posts of three upazilas have already been elected uncontested.
The 5th upazila election will be completed in five phases holding polls to some 480 upazilas out of the country’s 492 ones. The EC has so far announced the election schedule for the first four phases.
The second phase of the election is slated for March 18, the third for March 24 and the fourth for March 31.
The first upazila polls were held in 1985, while the following three were held in 1990, 2009 and 2014. The 4th upazila election was arranged in six phases after the 10th parliamentary elections held in January 2014, although with a casualty figure running into triple figures it became notorious as the most violent polls ever held in the country.