Dhaka, Jan 02 – The Returning Officers (ROs) of both Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) elections yesterday declared legal the nomination papers of 13 mayoral candidates except one. A total of 14 mayoral aspirants submitted nomination papers till the last day of submission of nomination papers on December 31.
The ROs of both DNCC and DSCC yesterday scrutinised their papers and gave green signal to be valid candidates for the polls except the nomination of Jatiya Party candidate for DNCC mayoral polls Kamrul Islam.
The DNCC Returning Officer Abul Kashem at the Election Training Institute in the capital cancelled the nomination paper of Kamrul Islam on the ground that his name was not in city corporation voter list.
“Abul Kashem is not the voter of the Dhaka city corporation. We cannot accept his nomination paper,” he added.
A total of seven mayoral aspirant candidates submitted their nomination papers to DNCC RO to be candidates for the polls scheduled on January 30.
The other six valid contenders are Md Atiqul Islam of the ruling party Awami League (AL), Tabith Awal of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Md Anisur Rahman Dewan of the National People’s Party, Shahin Khan of the Progressive Democratic Party, Sheikh Md Fazle Bari Masud of Islami Andolon Bangladesh, and Ahammad Sajedul Haque of the Bangladesh Communist Party.
In addition, DNCC RO announced 359 nomination papers legal out of 374 for general councillors while 87 nomination papers out of 89 for reserved councillor seats were declared legal.
On the other hand, the RO of DSCC declared legal the nomination papers of all the seven candidates in the DSCC mayoral elections.
The valid candidates are AL’s Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, BNP’s Ishraque Hossain, Jatiya Party’s Mohammad Saifuddin, Md Aktar Uzzaman alias Ayatullah of the Bangladesh Congress, Bahrane Sultan Bahar of National People’s Party, Abdus Samad of Ganofront and Islami Andolan Bangladesh candidate Abdur Rahman.
The aspirant candidates who will fail to get the validation to be candidates will be able to file an application to the Election Tribunals to get redress.
The aggrieved aspirant candidate can appeal to the tribunal against the decision of Returning officer on January 5. The Dhaka Commissioner will act as the Appeal authority to hold the hearing against the application.
In addition, provided that any aspirant candidate is aggrieved against the decision of the election tribunal, he/she can file an application to the higher courts to get redress.
As per the election scheduled of the Election Commission, the candidates who want to withdraw their nominations can do it on January 9.
The valid candidates will not get the election symbols on January 10. After obtaining the electoral symbols the candidates are allowed to launch their election campaign formally to seek votes.
But as per the electoral code of conduct, none is allowed to carry out any sort of campaigning before obtaining electoral symbols from the returning officers.
As per EC, over 57 lakh voters – 32 lakh in DNCC and 25 lakh in DSCC would cast their votes in around 14,000 booths of about 2,600 polling centres on January 30 through Electronic Voting Machines.
DNCC voters will also elect 54 ward councillors and 18 reserved women councillors while DSCC voters will elect 75 ward councillors and 25 reserved women councillors. – Staff Reporter
