Some councillor candidates of three city corporations who could not come out successful in Tuesday’s polls have alleged that the election results were manipulated.
They lodged complaints with the Election Commission on Thursday seeking remedies to the election anomalies.
General councillor candidate Abdus Sabur Liton of Ward No-25 of Chittagong City Corporation put forward a complaint to the EC providing two types of election sheets of Dew Point School polling station (centre No-471) in the port city’s Halishahar areas.
Sabur said he was shown defeated by SM Ersad Ullah through a narrow margin in a fake election sheet of the centre. At the centre, the number of votes against Ershad Ullah was shown 381 instead of only 61 to ensure his victory, Sabur alleged. “Ershad got only 61 votes at the centre, according to the election sheet provided to my polling agent on Tuesday evening, but we found 381 votes against his name in the second result sheet submitted to the Returning Officer,” he told UNB.
In other 13 centres out of 14 in the ward, Sabur polled 4900 while Ershad 4770 votes, he mentioned in his complaint. “With the manipulation in the election results of the centre-471, I was shown defeated by Ershad Ullah,” Sabur said. Meanwhile, general councillor candidate Mohammad Monir Hossain of Ward No-54 of Dhaka South City Corporation lodged a complaint with the commission that the election results of six polling stations out of 20 was manipulated.
Monir bagged 3489 votes in all 20 polling stations, while Md Masud, who was unofficially elected, got 5368 votes in the ward. He said fake result sheets were made for the six centres to ensure the victory of Masud.
He put forward the copies of the fake sheets to the Commission, seeking recounting of votes of the six centres.
Like Sabur and Monir, some other candidates lodged complaints with the commission about doctoring of election results.
Jubaid Adel who suffered defeat to Rafiqul Islam Rasel in the Ward No-31 of DSCC and Shamsul Huda who was defeated by Sirajul Islam Bhatti in the Ward No-7 of DSCC are among the complainants.
Besides, female councillor candidate for the reserved seat-14 of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Rosy Razia complained to the Election Commission of election result manipulation.
The elections to DNCC, DSCC and CCC were held on Tuesday with 45 percent turnout of voters. However, pro-BNP mayoral candidates of the three cities pulled of the election partway through bringing accusations of widespread vote fraud.
