Savar upazila, which had the highest number of voters in comparison to other upazilas, ended yesterday amid low voter turnout and allegations of irregularities at different polling centres.
During the polls, which began from 8:00am and continued till 2:00pm, most of the 260 polling centres in the upazila were almost empty.
Savar upazila has 79, 5585 voters, the highest number in 2014. The number was at 67, 9848 during the previous upazila polls in 2009.
At 10:00am, only 165 votes were cast at the male polling centre and only 98 votes were cast in female centre at the Savar United School. By 3:00pm, the number of votes at the male centre rose to 285, while 170 votes were cast at the female centre. Total number of voters for the polling centre was 3,578.
At Gyan Bikash School, which was a female centre, only 283 votes were cast till 1:30 pm. At the end of the day, only 565 votes were cast at the polling centre among 2,200 voters.
At Baktarpur Kindergarten, only 305 votes were cast till 12:30pm. Throughout the day, 730 votes were cast among 3,902 voters listed at the polling centre.
At Atomic Energy School & College, 740 votes casted were out of 3,984 listed voters.
At Holy Child Kindergarten polling centre at the Dhamsona area of Ashulia, 532 votes out of 3,786 were cast till the election ended at 4:00pm. Many female voters of at the centre also complained that they could not cast their vote as their names were not included in the voters list.
Meanwhile, supporters of Awami League-backed candidate Feroz Kabir reportedly took position of two polling centres in the afternoon and gave fake votes. Later, voting was postponed at the centres till 3:30pm. The supporters also took attempts to assault the presiding officer of Anirban Kindergarten polling centre.
Similar allegations of fake votes and other irregularities were also received from different polling centres in the upazila. Meanwhile, polling agents of the BNP-backed candidate Kafil Uddin complained that they were thrown out of the polling centres by ruling party men.
“We were kicked out of the polling centres,” Sohel Rana, a polling agent of Kafil Uddin at Shimulia area, told Dhaka Tribune.
A similar scenario was also witnessed at Holy Child Kindergarten polling centre, where this reporter found only polling agents of Feroz Kabir.
However, when asked, Jahangir Alam, the presiding officer, said: “In my centres, there are polling agents from every candidate and everything is going in the right way.”
A combined force of 1,518 armed police, 5,424 Ansar and VDP members had been deployed for ensuring security at the 260 polling centres in the upazila.
