Staff Reporter :
Referring to instances of anomalies in Saturday’s municipality polls, EC Mahbub Talukdar on Saturday said the polls cannot be called “participatory”.
In a statement, Mahbub Talukdar said after visiting 18 booths in three polling stations of Savar municipality on Saturday and saw about 1,232 out of 7,311 voters cast their votes till 1:00 pm.
“In three booths, I saw three polling agents of opposition party candidates but there were no agents in rest of the booths. Besides, I didn’t see any poster of opposition party candidates in Savar municipality area,” he said. In this case, this election cannot be called participatory and no election is perfect if it is not participatory, Mahbub Talukdar said.
Stating that violence continues in municipality elections, Mahbub said violence and elections cannot go together.
This violence cannot be stopped unless the electoral process changes, he also said, adding that everyone needs to agree on this. “Human life is much more valuable than any election,” he observed.
