AL picks Nuruddin Chowdhury Nayan for Papul’s vacant seat 

Nuruddin Chowdhury Nayan, AL Laxmipur district unit general secretary, has been nominated by the Awami League in the by-election of Laxmipur-2 constituency.

Awami League on Saturday picked its candidate for contesting the election at a meeting of its Local Government Nomination Board held at Ganabhaban with party President and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

The by-polls to Laxmipur-2 will be held on 11 April.

The parliamentary constituency (Laxmipur-2) was declared vacant after independent parliamentarian Mohammad Shahid Islam alias Kazi Papul was sentenced by a Kuwaiti court for a criminal offense.

Earlier on 2 February, the Parliament Secretariat issued a gazette notification declaring that the Laxmipur-2 constituency (Parliamentary Seat-275) fell vacant on January 28, 2021, the date of the court's sentence.

According to the gazette, Papul is ineligible to remain an MP under Article 66 (2) (Gha) of the Constitution as he was sentenced by Kuwaiti criminal court to four-year rigorous imprisonment on January 28.

MP Papul is currently in Kuwait jail after he was arrested there in June last on charges of human trafficking, residency visa trading and money laundering.

On 28 January last, a Kuwaiti court sentenced Papul and four others to four years jail and fined 1.9 million Kuwaiti dinars in a bribery case.