Mayoral campaign has geared up for the Sylhet City Corporation election, which is scheduled for June 15.
Aspiring mayoral front-runners backed by Awami League and BNP have begun full swing campaigning.
Sylhet AL unanimously nominated Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran as its candidate at a meeting held at the city’s Gulsan center on April 26.
Finance Minister and the Lawmaker of Sylhet 1 constituency Abul Mal Abdul Muhith declared Kamran as the sole AL candidate for the polls.
Kamran kicked off his election campaign through a view exchanging meeting and Dua Mahfil on May 5 at his residence in the city’s Charar Par area.
Main opposition BNP has yet to finalise their nomination.
More than 200 candidates for councillorship in various wards and four candidates for the mayoral post have collected nomination papers from the election office.
Voters will choose their mayoral representative for the third time on June 15, 2013.
Sylhet Municipality was upgraded to Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) on 2002.
Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran has been serving as major for the last 12 years.
Sylhet city unit BNP president and former organising secretary of the party central committee MA Haque told the Dhaka
Tribune that his party will not participate in the SCC polls, in accordance with the party strategy of not being involved with any election under the incumbent government.
Nonetheless, half a dozen BNP people are running election campaigns.
Farooque Mahmud Chowdhury, a social elite, said political nomination plays a significant role in the non-political local polls.
Among the aspiring mayoral candidates from BNP are Ariful Haque Chowdhury, central executive body member, and Nasim Hussain, city unit vice-president, both of whom started their campaign publicly with demonstrations in the city.
Arif on May 2 and Nasim on May 7 declared their candidacies in separate gatherings.
Another faction of the Sylhet BNP wants advocate Shamsuzzaman, the district unit president of Shecchasebak Dal to be the party’s mayoral candidate.
On May 5, the group announced their preference at a press conference.
City unit general secretary Abdul Qyum Jalali Ponki and organising secretary Rejaul Hassan koyes Ludi are also in the running.
Of the half a dozen candidates from BNP, Ariful Haque Chowdhury is a particularly strong candidate, according to locals, who said that Arif contributed to development in the city during the BNP-led four-party alliance government in 2001-2005, when he was just a councillor.
“We would pick up such a mayor, that will promise us to solve waterlogging, currently the biggest problem in the city,” said Shamim Ahmed, a local businessman.
Zinda Bazaar inhabitant Nahiyan said corrupt men will be abandoned this year.
Kamran and Arif are engaged in war of words, with the BNP man claiming that the mayor has completely failed to meet people’s expectations.
Kamran claims that people know Arif to be a corrupt man, who attained a position among the top 50 corrupt persons in the country during the 1/11 rolling.
The city dwellers enjoyed maximum services during this government tenure, he added.
In line with the election schedule, mayoral aspirants and councillors will have to file applications seeking candidacies for the battle of ballots by May 12.
The election officials will scrutinise the applications on May 15-16 while the last date for withdrawal of candidacies is May 26.
