Putting aside fear of violence in the election day, voters in Badarganj municipality, Rangpur yesterday cast their votes amid festivity as no toward incident took place in the municipality area.
AL candidate wins in mayoral race
Awami League’s mayoral candidate Uttam Kumar Saha won the election in the municipality defeating his nearest rival independent candidate Ajijul Haque.
Uttam’s ‘boat’ symbol bagged 6,992 votes, while Ajijul ‘coconut’ got 5,995 votes. Returning Officer GM Sahadat Uddin declared Uttam Kumar Saha elected unofficially in the evening. BNP candidate Paritosh Chandra Chakrawarty got only 554 votes.
The enthusiastic voters of the municipality began going to polling centres before 8am and they cast their votes till 4pm. There are nine polling centres in Badarganj municipality with 17,481 voters.
During visit to different polling centres, this correspondent found that voters were waiting in the long queue at the beginning of the day. The number of voters started decreasing with the progress of the day as most of voters cast their votes at the begging of the day.
“Everything was quite fine here. I did not face any kind of difficulty while casting my vote,” said Shyamoly, a voter.
Sabiha Begum who went to cast her vote at Bodarganj Mohila Degree Collage polling centre said election was peaceful there. She also expressed hope that mayoral aspirant for whom she cast vote would win in the race. Mayoral aspirants from different parties said voting was peaceful in the municipality. Six candidates fought for mayoral post. Mayoral aspirants were also seen at different polling stations throughout the day.
“The whole scenario of the election is peaceful here. With this election, I have been running for the mayoral post three times, but this is the best and remarkable election I observed today [yesterday],” said Awami League candidate Uttam Kumar Saha. Independent candidate Ajijul Haque said: “Environment of the election is good.”
Acknowledging the better environment of voting yesterday, BNP candidate Paritosh Chandra Chakrawarty said there was a festival of distributing money among voters in the last three nights. But he did not mention who or which party was distributing the money. Jatiyo Party candidate Latiful Khabir mentioned the peaceful election too.
Officer-in-Charge of Badarganj police station Jinnah told the Dhaka Tribune that voters had applied their voting rights in festive mood.
