The fourth phase of the ongoing upazila polls will be held tomorrow in 91 upazila parishads, amid widespread allegations of manipulating and threatening voters and opposition candidates by ruling party-backed aspirants.
Voters, candidates and their agent, mainly the BNP-backed candidates, have expressed concerns over violence and polls manipulation after receiving threats from ruling party-backed candidates.
Although the Election Commission has received complaints from many candidates on being harassed from the administration officials and police, the commission has not yet moved to address the allegations.
Meanwhile, election campaigning in 91 upazila parishads yesterday ended and all vehicular movement had been halted from midnight.
A total of 1,186 candidates, which includes 389 candidates for chairman, 485 for vice chairman and 312 for women vice chairman were contesting in the 91 upazila parishads.
It was observed that in both the Awami League and BNP, several rebel candidates have also joined the electoral race in this phase as like the previous three phases held earlier.
Meanwhile, the commission has postponed the polls in Sherpur Sadar, Jagannathpur upazila in Sunamganj as per a High Court order.
The Election Commission has already deployed the army as striking forces while other law enforcing agencies, including Border Guard Bangladesh, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), police and Ansar, had also been positioned in the respective upazilas for maintaining the law and order situation during the polls.
An EC official yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune that intelligence reports received by the commission indicated that chances of incidents of violence and disorder are higher than the compared the last three phases of the polls.
Election Commissioner Mohammad Abu Hafiz said the local administration would decide about increasing the deployment of law enforcing personnel considering the vulnerable polling centres.
The commission had setup 5,882 polling stations in 91 upazila polls, where 37,338 polling booths has been setup. Of total 13,859,278 voters while 6,907,956 are male and 69,51,322 are female will cast their votes on the election day.
In fourth phase, 43 of AL and 44 of BNP rebel candidates are contesting in the polls.
Earlier, allegations were made that a ruling-party candidate in Kolaroa upazila in Satkhira had threatened both voters and opponents and their agents to stay away from polling centres or face dire consequences.
In a written allegation sent to the EC, BNP-backed candidate Shahidul Islam alleged that Awami League-backed candidate Firoz Ahmad Shopan issued an open threat against voters and opponents during a meeting with his supporters on March 19. He also submitted a video footage of the respective meeting to the commission.
“If you find ink in any voter’s finger, cut it off. If any voter dies after being beaten of my activists for going to cast their vote on election day, I will not responsible for that,” the written allegation quoted the Awami League backed candidate as instructing his activists.