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GCC Polls held peacefully


Published : 26 May 2023 01:38 AM

The elections to much talked about Gazipur City Corporation (GCC) was held peacefully on Thursday with no reported incident of violence.

At the ending of vote casting, as of filing the report, independent mayoral candidate Zayeda Khatun, mother of former GCC mayor (Dismissed) was leading the race. 

Zayeda Khatun was leading with 63879 votes with ruling Awami League candidate Azmat Ullah, who got 52,999 votes.

According to Election Commission officials, a total of eight candidates contested for the mayoral posts while 248 for the post councilors in 57. Besides, 79 female councillor contested for the reserved posts for the women.

Among all the eight GCC mayoral candidates, five contested from different political parties and three others as the independent candidates.

Those who contested from the parties for the GCC mayoral posts were Advocate Azmat Ullah Khan from the Awami League (Boat symbol), former secretary MM Niazuddin from the Jatiya Party (Plough symbol), Gazi Ataur Rahman from the Islami Andolon Bangladesh (Hand fan symbol), Raju Ahmed from the Zaker Party (Rose symbol), and Atiqul Islam from the Gana Front (Fish symbol).

Besides, independent candidates for the mayoral post were Zayeda Khatun (Table clock symbol), Harun-or-Rashid (Horse symbol), and Sarkar Shah Nur Islam (Elephant symbol).

Earlier, long queues of voters were seen at polling stations since morning. Apart from male voters, the presence of female voters was also noticeable.

The voting started using the electronic voting machine (EVM) at 480 polling centers at 8:am and it continued till 4:00pm without any break.

The candidates expressed satisfaction with the overall electioneering situation.

Not only the candidates but also the voters were happy seeing peaceful voting in the Gazipur city elections.

The GCC, constituted with a total of 57 wards, has some 11, 794, 76 voters. Of them, 5, 92,762 are male voters, 5, 86,696 are female voters and the rest 18 are of third gender.

A total of 30 teams led by the members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), 13 platoons of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), 19 striking police force teams and fifty-seven mobile teams were deployed at the GCC areas.

Expressing satisfaction over the GCC polls, Election Commissioner Md Alamgir said the election was held in free, fair and peaceful manner.

"The election was held peaceful and fair," he told a press conference at the Election Commission (EC) Secretariat in capital Dhaka at around 5:30 pm after ending of the voting of the GCC polls. The voter turnout was about 50 percent.” 

"We found no report of irregularities in other centres. I took action where irregularities were noticed. There were more than 4,000 CCTV cameras. It was not possible to monitor every camera at once," Alamgir said.