How BNP is losing grip in Chattogram
BNP mayor candidate gets no vote at two centres those are known as BNP strongholds
In the 2010 Chattogram City Corporation (CCC) elections, the BNP mayoral candidate bagged 719 votes at Naziria Naimia Mahmudia Senior Fazil Madarasa polling centre-2, while the Awami League (AL) candidate got 622 votes.
At the same centre in the next CCC polls in 2015, the BNP candidate had 520 votes while the AL contestant secured 446.
Although the locality is known as a BNP stronghold, the party did not get a single vote at the centre in Wednesday's polls.
Of the total 2,768 voters, 282 cast their ballots for AL-backed mayor contestant Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, while one voted Bangladesh Islami Front backed candidate MA Matin.
The BNP seems to have lost ground in the port city with a poor show at other centres too.
The BNP mayor candidate did not get a single vote at two centres, only one vote at 25 polling centres, two votes at 38 centres, three votes at 28 centres, four votes at 14 centres, five votes at 16 centres and 6-10 vote at 64 centres. The number of polling centres was 733.
In 2015 elections, the BNP mayor candidate got less than 10 votes in three centres. In the 2010 elections, the lowest number of votes that BNP got at a centre was 90.
Apart from AL mayor candidate Rezaul Karim Chowdhury and BNP's Shahadat Hossain, five other people ran for the mayoral post on Wednesday. Of the 1,938,706 voters, 4,35,490 voters cast their vote through electronic voting machines.
In this year's elections, the BNP mayor candidate got only 52,459 votes while the number of votes was 3,04,837 in 2015.
In the 2010 CCC election, which was widely termed as competitive, the BNP mayoral candidate secured 4,79,145 votes.
In the latest polls, 184 out of 733 centres witnessed a turnout of less than 10% voters for the first time. At 73 centres, the turnout was even below 5%.
While contacted, BNP's mayoral candidate Shahadat Hossain said, "The numbers show what type of elections was held on Wednesday."
"Voters could not go to the polling centres as the ruling party barred them," he told The Business Standard.
