All of the three mayoral candidates contested in the Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) elections have lost their deposits as they failed to bag even one-eighth votes of the total votes cast. These three mayoral candidates contested against the Mayor-elect AHM Khairuzzaman Liton.
According to the rule of the Election Commission, if any candidate fails to bag even one-eighth number of votes of the total votes cast, his/her deposit money will be forfeited. As all three candidates who contested against AHM Khairuzzman Liton failed to bag the required amount of votes, their deposit money will be forfeited.
EC sources mentioned there were four Mayoral candidates in Rajshahi City Corporation elections held on 21 June. All those candidates received a total of 195,758 votes and one-eighths of the total cast vote is 24,457. None of the candidates except Liton received even one-eighth of the votes for which they are losing their deposits.
According to the results of the elections- Awami League candidate AHM Khairuzzaman Liton received 160,290 votes with the symbol 'Boat' while his nearest contestant from Islami Andolon Maulana Murshid Alam with 'Hand fan' symbol bagged only 13,483 votes, Jatiya Party candidate Saiful Islam Swapon with 'Plough' symbol received 10,272 votes and Jaker Party Mayoral candidate Latif Anowar with 'Rose' symbol received 11,713 votes. All these three candidates will not get back TK. 20,000 each which they paid as the deposit at the Election Commission before the vote.
Islami Andolon Bangladesh candidate Murshid Alam said, the IAB had earlier declared to reject the elections and there is no participation of his party in the elections yet some candidates who love the party have cast votes in the ' Hand fan' symbol. He has no headache with the banning of the deposit, he added.
Returning Officer of RCC Elections informed, a total of 56.2o per cent of the votes was cast in the elections. The number of cancelled votes was 2,070. Many voters failed to cast their votes properly through the EVMs that is their votes were rejected.