Staff Reporter :
Awami League’s Arfanul Haque Rifat because Mayor of Cumilla on Wednesday defeating his closest rival former BNP leader Monirul Haque Sakku by a margin of only 343 votes.
According to the results announced by Returning Officer Shahedunnabi Chowdhury, he bagged 50,310 votes with “boat” symbol.
His closest rival, former BNP leader Monirul Haque Sakku secured 49,967 votes with “table clock” symbol.
The results were announced at around 9:30 pm after the vote counting. The balloting ended at 4pm.
Another independent candidate Nizam Uddin Kaiser has secured 29,999 votes.
According to the Returning Officer’s Office, there were a total of 229,920 voters in the elections.
Of them, 117,092 were females, 112,826 were males and two others were transgender voters.
Voting took place in 640 centres of 105 polling stations overall.
Rejecting the result, Monirul Haque Sakku said, “I have won by 980 votes, Awami League leaders and workers have thwarted the results, I will go to the High Court.”
The vote counting was suspended for a brief period after a scuffle broke out between the supporters of Rifat and Sakku.
The two factions went face to face on the Cumilla Shilpakala Academy premises from where the results were announced after balloting ended. Later police charged batons to disperse them.
Supporters of Monir Haque Sakku claimed that the AL candidate’s supporters attacked them.
A total of five mayor candidates, 108 councillor aspirants and 38 female councillor aspirants contested in the polls.
The five mayor candidates were Awami League nominated candidate Arfanul Haque Rifat, Monirul Haque Sakku (Independent), Mohammad Nizam Uddin Kaiser (Independent), Islamic Movement nominated Rashedul Islam and Kamrul Ahsan Babul (Independent).
In the maiden Cumilla city polls in 2012, Sakku defeated Awami League candidate Afzal Khan by over 30,000 votes. In 2017, he defeated Afzal’s daughter Anjum Sultana Sima by about 10,000 votes.
