A glitch in an electronic voting machine (EVM) delayed Jatiya Party (JaPa) mayoral candidate Mostafizur Rahman's voting by 30 minutes at the Rangpur City Corporation (RpCC) on Tuesday.
The candidate had to wait about 30 minutes to cast his vote, reports Bangla Tribune.
Mostafizur Rahman said he entered a polling centre at Alamnagar Collegepara Government Primary School at around 8:50am, but the EVM was not working when he tried to cast his vote.
Later, Rahman left the polling centre and expressed his disappointment to the journalists present there.
He said: "When I went there to cast vote, I saw that the EVM was glitching. If this is the condition of EVMs, how will the people vote?”
“We asked to keep the EVMs working from the beginning, but the returning officer did not follow through with the instructions. It has been proved today (Tuesday) that these machines (EVMs) are faulty,” he added.
The JaPa mayoral candidate later manages to cast vote at around 9:20am.
In this regard, the presiding officer of the polling centre said: The machine (EVM) was fixed instantly. The problem was reported from only one of the rooms, the rest are fine.”
However, similar problems were reported from other polling centres, with many voters unable to cast their votes as their fingerprints did not match.
Balloting for 33 wards of Rangpur City Corporation (RpCC) began at 8am on Tuesday.
The voting will take place via electronic voting machines (EVM) at 229 centres till 4pm.
There are a total of 4,26,470 listed voters in Rangpur city, which sees its fourth election on Tuesday.
The Election Commission has in place six-tier security measures for the RpCC polls on Tuesday.
Nine candidates are vying for the mayoral position and 183 people are contesting councillors' posts under 33 wards. Sixty-eight female candidates are contesting in the polls for 11 reserved seats.
Members of different law enforcement agencies, including police, Ansar and village police, Armed Police Battalion (APBn), Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) are on the ground across the city.
