Opposition BNP-backed contender MA Mannan has won a landslide victory in the race to become Mayor of Bangladesh’s biggest city corporation in Gazipur.
Published : 06 Jul 2013, 11:04 PM
He defeated his closest rival, ruling Awami League-supported Azmat Ullah Khan by a massive margin of 106,577 votes.
He had 365,444 votes at all the 392 centres with his logo ‘television’ against Azmat who managed to draw 258,867 votes with his ‘inkpot-pen’ symbol.
Returning Officer Matiar Rahman had begun announcing the official results at 7:20pm. The counting of votes ended and the final result was announced early on Sunday.
Mannan was present at the office of the returning officer during the announcement while Azmat was not.
Azmat had been the Tongi municipal Mayor since 1995.
Mannan, who won the 1991 national elections from a Gazipur constituency, was the State Minister for Religious Affairs in Khaleda Zia’s 1991 administration.
The voting at 392 centres in the city, which began at 8am Saturday, had ended peacefully at 4pm.
Over 7,000 electoral officials including presiding officers, assistant presiding officers and polling officers were deputed for the ballot.
In total, seven candidates including Mannan and Azmat ran for the Mayor’s office. A total of 456 candidates were also in the fray for councillors of 57 general wards, and 128 women contested for the 19 reserved seats.
Among other candidates, Aman Ullah had the poll symbol ‘padlock’, Nazim Uddin Ahmed ‘horse’, Md Mejbah Uddin Sarkar Rubel ‘duck’, Rina Sultana ‘butterfly’, and Jahangir Alam ‘pineapple’.
There were 2,289 polling rooms in 392 centres in the 330-square kilometre city corporation. Of the 10,26,938 voters in the city corporation, 499,161 were women and 527,777 men.