Prospective candidates for the Comilla-1 (Daudkandi-Titas) seat have already started mass communication ahead of the 12th parliamentary election by participating in the party and various social events and are announcing their candidature through banners and festoons.
Even though the elections are still about five months away, the aspirants are visiting their constituencies and forming election monitoring committees at the union and village levels.
The Comilla-1 constituency has added importance as it is adjacent to the Dhaka-Chittagong highway and close to the capital. Also, the two main political parties—the Awami League and the BNP—have heavyweight candidates here, including the incumbent lawmaker, Major General (Retd) Mohammad Shubid Ali Bhuiyan. Therefore, some are reluctant to make concessions in the battle for status.
Dhaka Tribune notes that after the fall of Jatiya Party (JaPa) founder and military dictator General HM Ershad in 1990, most of the competitive elections were won by the BNP. This exhaustive analysis depicts the 11 national election outcomes since 1973 to identify patterns and trends in the electoral landscape of the constituency.
Who is next?
This time, local voters and political leaders believe that, if the BNP participates in the election, the nomination of Dr Khandkar Mosharraf Hossain, a member of the party's Standing Committee and former minister, is almost certain.
Since there is no strong opponent in the party, he is relaxed about the rise of rebel candidates.
A geologist by profession, Dr Mosharraf contested the 2018 election from both Comilla-1 and Comilla-2 seats but conceded defeat to two AL candidates—Shubid Ali in Comilla-1 and Selima Ahmad in Comilla-2.
Dr Mosharraf was earlier elected as a Member of Parliament four times from the Comilla-2 constituency from 1991-2001.
Another BNP policymaker, MK Anwar, won the Comilla-1 seat four times since 1991 and the Comilla-2 seat in 2008. He died on October 24, 2017.
On the other hand, the fleet of ruling party candidates is quite large.
Apart from the incumbent lawmaker, the other aspirants include AL central unit Science and Technology Affairs Secretary Engineer Abdus Sabur and Barrister Naeem Hasan, the son of late AL leader Hasan Jamil Sattar. They are meeting the party's high command, and also running from door to door to grassroots leaders and activists to ensure the nomination.
Potential candidates from other parties, including JaPa, Jamaat-e-Islami, Islami Andolan Bangladesh, and Zaker Party, are not sitting idle. They are also meeting the voters with various promises.
Boundaries changed
Located by the Meghna-Gomti River basin, this constituency is currently known as Comilla-1 (Daudkandi-Titas). Previously, till the 11th national election of 2018, it was regarded as Comilla-1 (Daudkandi-Meghna).
The seat was reorganized through a gazette published on June 4 of this year.
The Meghna upazila has now been attached to the Homna upazila, which is known as Comilla-2. Before delimitation, the Comilla-1 constituency had 342,965 voters in the 11th parliamentary election, and the other had 290,026 voters.
AL tenure
In the 11th general election of 2018, Shubid Ali secured 135,813 votes (55.5%) to win the seat for the third time in a row; the BNP's Mosharraf got 95,542 votes (39%) while Bashir Ahmed of Islami Andolan Bangladesh bagged the third-highest vote of 4,769 (8%). Some 71.3% of the voters exercised their franchise.
The retired defence official was elected in the 2014 election, boycotted by the BNP, by defeating the AL's rebel candidate, Barrister Naim Hasan.
In the 2008 election, Shubid Ali again defeated Mosharraf by a small margin, as he got 114,818 votes (53.2%) against 96,378 (44.7%). The election saw a staggering turnout of 83.1%.
BNP era
After the introduction of a democratic system, BNP leader MK Anwar defeated the AL's Mortuza Hossain Mollah in the fifth general election of 1991, which saw a voter turnout of 47.8%.
Anwar got 69,931 votes (72%) while the AL leader secured 21,380 votes (22%) and six other candidates lost their security deposits.
The BNP leader was elected unopposed in the February 15 election of 1996 and defeated the AL's Jahangir Alam Sarkar by a margin of nearly 40,000 votes on June 25. He bagged 69,356 votes (68.4%) and Jahangir got 29,594 votes (29.2%). The voter turnout stood at 62.1%.
In 2001, when the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance came to power, MK Anwar won against Jahangir by a similar margin: the BNP candidate got 73,936 votes (67.4%) and his rival bagged 34,645 votes (31.6%). The election drew 62.7% of the voters to polling centres.
During the Ershad rule, JaPa leader Mohammad Mobarak Ali won the seat in 1986 and 1988, while the BNP's Abdus Sattar Bhuiyan secured victory in 1979, when General Ziaur Rahman was in power, and Mohammad Sayedul Haque in the first parliamentary election of 1973.
