District Council polls held in peaceful manner: CEC

Staff Reporter :
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kazi Habibul Awal has said that the District Council polls were held in a peaceful and orderly manner.
“The balloting was monitored, and we are satisfied with the process. We haven’t received any information about irregularities, violence, or disturbances from anywhere,” he told reporters at the Election Commission headquarters on Monday.
“Election monitoring through CCTV has been a new experience for us. This will make it possible to hold fair and beautiful elections in the future,” he added.
Referring to the position of the Election Commission, he said: “We have been saying since the beginning that we want fair elections. It is our responsibility to ensure a peaceful voting system and we have done that. We have enriched the monitoring system by adding more CCTV cameras.”
In a response to a question of whether candidates winning the polls unopposed will have any negative impact on electoral culture, the CEC said: “We have not done the analysis on this matter yet. This is a matter which politicians will look into it and analyse. We will not comment on this.”
Regarding using CCTV cameras to monitor elections, Habibul Awal said that the recent suspension of the Gaibandha-5 by-polls may come with a positive message that elections can be monitored and be stopped if irregularities are reported.
In response to the MPs going to the polling stations, the CEC said that the Election Commission does not have any information regarding this matter.
Amid heavy security and monitoring, the voting in the District Council polls has ended peacefully.
The voting began at 9am and continued till 2pm under the supervision of the deputy commissioners, according to the Election Commission.
The voting was held at 925 booths in 462 centres across the country and 60,866 voters were eligible to cast their votes.
The CEC and other election commissioners monitored the District Council polls through CCTV cameras at the Election Commission headquarters.
Law enforcers were deployed at every polling centre to ensure orderly and peaceful polling.
In this election, 92 people contested for the post of chairman, 1485 people contested for the post of member, and 603 people contested for the post of reserved women member.
The EC said that 26 chairmen, 18 women members and 65 general members were elected unopposed in the Zila Parishad elections.
Chapainawabganj and Noakhali Zila Parishad elections have been postponed on the direction of the court. All the candidates in Bhola and Feni districts were elected unopposed. As a result, no polls were held in these two districts.