Desk Report,
Allegations of vote rigging in leadership election, announcement of siege of party office
Arrangements made for voting in the election of leaders for the posts of president and general secretary of Kushtia Municipality BNP. Last Friday, voting was held after the conference at the KushtiaCollege premises and the results were announced at night. However, a defeated candidate for the post of president is unwilling to accept the results. He has alleged vote rigging.
Allegations of vote rigging in leadership election, announcement of siege of party office
Today, Sunday afternoon, in a press conference at a restaurant in the city, former joint general secretary of the defeated presidential candidate of the district, Kajal Majmadar, accused top leaders of vote rigging and demanded a re-election. At the press conference, she said, “The vote was conducted by an invisible force. There was a plan to defeat me from the beginning. District BNP member secretary Zakir Hossain Sarkar has cheated me. I will continue the movement. The party office will be surrounded on July 1.”
However, district BNP member secretary Zakir Hossain Sarkar claimed to Prothom Alo that Kajal Majmadar’s allegations are baseless.
Party sources said that as per the central decision of the BNP, leaders are being elected through conferences and votes in various upazila and municipal committees of the district. In continuation of that, 21 ward committees of Kushtia Municipality BNP were formed. On Friday, a conference was held at Kushtia Government College premises to mark the formation of the Kushtia Municipality BNP committee. There were a total of 1,491 voters. There were 6 candidates for the post of president. In the results announced at 10 pm, AK Biswas Babu was declared president and Kamal Uddin was elected general secretary. The winning president AK Biswas got 611 votes. The closest candidate Kajal Majmadar got 595 votes.
After the results were announced, Kajal Majmadar and her supporters rejected the results. Alleging rigging, she filed a written complaint with the Election Commission demanding a recount of the votes. Yesterday, Saturday afternoon, they took up residence at the Kushtia District BNP office. Later, Election Commissioner District BNP’s former Legal Affairs Secretary Abdul Majid counted the votes again in the presence of the district BNP leaders. Kajal Majmadar got 4 votes out of the cancelled votes. As a result, the number of votes she received stood at 599.
