Awami League nominated mayoral candidates won both the Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) and Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) elections held on Wednesday.
Both the elections to RCC and SCC were held in a free and fair manner. No untoward incidents were reported.
In Rajshahi, ruling party candidate former mayor AHM Khairuzzaman Liton (Boat) has unofficially been elected as the RCC mayor further by defeating his nearest candidate Islami Andolan nominated candidate Murshid Alam.
Khairuzzaman Liton won the RCC Mayoral election by defeating his nearest candidate with a huge difference of 1,46,404 votes.
According to the EC officials, Liton got a total of 1,59,797 votes in the symbol of ‘Boat’, while his nearest candidate Murshid Alam of Islami Andolan got only 13,393 votes in ‘Hand Fan’ symbol.
Besides in Sylhet, Awami League nominated candidate Anwaruzzaman Chowdhury won the KCC mayoral election by defeating his nearest candidate Nazrul Islam Babul of Jatiya Party with a massive difference of 64,293 votes.
Anwaruzzaman got 118614 votes while Babul got 50,321 votes.
Voting in both RCC and SCC began at 8:00am and continued without any break till 4:00pm.
The entire voting process was monitored through the CCTV cameras. RCC election was monitored through a total of 1,463 CCTV cameras while the SCC election was monitored through 1,747 CCTV cameras.
Election Commissioners Brigadier General (Rtd) Ahsan Habib Khan, Md Alamgir and Rasheda Sultana monitored the election from the control room.
The number of total voters in RCC was 352,157. People cast their votes at 1,153 polling booths under 155 centres. A total of 161 candidates contested for various positions of RCC, with four mayoral candidates. In the past two polls, the turnout was 78.86% (2018) and 68.70% (2013).
In the Sylhet City Polls, the number of voters was 486,605 and people of SCC cast their votes at 1,364 polling booths under 190 centres. A total of 388 candidates contested the RCC elections for various posts. Of them eight candidates vied for the mayoral post, higher than the past two elections where the voter turnout was around 62%.
At the end of the voting, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Habibul Awal told the media in the afternoon that the turn out voters in RCC was 52-55% while 46% in SCC
"No mentionable unpleasant occurrence has been reported over the day. Overall, the polls were free, fair and festive in both cities," he said while briefing reporters at the Election Commission headquarters.
Votes were cast through the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) amid the surveillance of the law-enforcers from various agencies. Besides, personnel from the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) were also on patrol duties.
Meanwhile, defying central decision of the BNP, a total of 57 leaders of the party contested for various posts in the elections to both the RCC and the SCC.
The BNP earlier expelled its 16 leaders for their participation in the RCC election while 41 others for their participation in the SCC election.
The BNP so far expelled a total of 114 of its leaders for their participation in five elections to Gazipur, Barishal, Khulna, Rajshahi and Sylhet city corporations.
