Only a miracle can see BNP's Ariful to lose Sylhet mayor race to AL's Kamran

The Awami League candidate Bodor Uddin Ahmed Kamran has a mathematical chance of edging ahead of his rival the BNP’s Ariful Haque Chowdhury in Sylhet mayoral elections.

For the victory to happen, the ruling party aspirant will need almost all of the 4,787 voters at stake in the two centres where balloting was postponed for irregularities on Monday to vote for him in re-polling.

BNP’s mayoral candidate Ariful Haque Chowdhury casts his vote at the Rainagar Government Primary School in Sylhet on Monday.

Ariful, who has bagged 90,496 votes with paddy sheaf logo in 132 of 134 cetnres, is only 162 votes shy of re-election as he leads Kamran by 4,626 votes.

Kamran with boat logo polled 85,870.

Kamran’s possibility to win

Having already tasted defeat against Ariful by around 35,000 votes in the 2013 polls, Kamran seems to have to pull off the impossible to snatch the victory.

A total of 198,656 out of 321,732 voters in the city cast their votes, while 7,367 votes were cancelled.

Even if the around 62 percent turnout remains in re-polling in the two remaining centres, that will be around 3,000 votes.

And even if Ariful does not get a single vote in the worst case scenario, there is no chance he will lose out in final results.

So, even though victory is possible for both of them mathematically, the balance is titled towards Ariful by an unassailable margin in reality.

 

What happens now

Kamran’s campaign chief has demanded recounting of votes instead of conceding the election, alleging irregularities in the counting.

Ariful, who had announced he was rejecting the results whatever the outcome, later said amidst celebrations by his supporters that he had made the comments to “condemn rigging”.

While announcing the results, Returning Officer Md Alimuzzaman said instead of declaring a winner he would send the results to the Election Commission for its judgement following the related law.   

Now the EC will order fresh elections to the postponed centres.

Generally, such re-polling is held within a month from the voting.