The Election Commission on Wednesday held hearing on 59 cases filed challenging the decision of nomination cancellation by returning officers across the country. “We’ve heard 59 aspirants today. Around 50 percent of the nomination papers we’ve accepted disposing of the cases,” Election Commissioner Md Shah Nawaz told journalists. A total of 138 appeals were filed with the EC appellate authority challenging the legality of Returning Officers (ROs) decisions of rejecting or accepting nomination papers. The commission started the hearings on the appeals on Wednesday morning at the EC secretariat in the capital and will continue till Thursday morning. Out of the 138 appeals, the 12 cases were lodged challenging the validity of the 10 nomination papers. The 10 nomination papers are of Dipankar Talukder of Rangamati constituency, Major (retd) Abdus Salam of Mymensingh-9 constituency, Mahfuzur Rahman of Chittagong-3, Nayeem Hasan of Comilla-1, ASM Firoze of Patuakhali-2, Yousuf Abdullah Harun of Comilla-3, AFM Bahauddin Bahar of Comilla-6, Mahbubul Alam Hanif of Kushtia-3, Azad Uddin Chowdhury of Laxmipur-4 and Md Mainul Islam of Chandpur-4. Of them each two cases were filed against nomination papers of Major (retd) Abdus Salam of Mymensingh-9 and Mahbub-ul Alam Hanif of Kushtia-3. During the scrutiny on December 5 -6, the ROs cancelled a total of 260 nomination papers out of 1,107 submitted within the December 2 deadline across the country. On November 25, the Election Commission announced the schedule for the country’s 10th parliamentary elections fixing the voting date for January 5, 2014. According to the election schedule, the last date for the withdrawal of candidature is December 13 while election symbols will be allocated among the valid candidates on December 14. – UNB
