The BNP has claimed its polling agents have forced out from voting centres as well as assaulted by ruling party supporters during the Khulna City Corporation (KCC) election.
They claim of being intimated by Awami League supporters forcing ‘them to take off identity cards’, Bangla Tribune correspondents report after visiting several polling stations across the city.
The KCC went to the polls at 8am and will continue until 4pm Tuesday at the 289 polling centres. Around half a million voters are expected to cast their franchise.
Atiur Rahman, a presiding officer at one of the centres, told Bangla Tribune that a BNP polling agent has complained him about being physically assaulted by Awami League supporters.
Bangla Tribune correspondents did not find any BNP polling agents at that polling station in the city corporation’s Ward 22.
Earlier in the day, BNP candidate Nazrul Islam Manzu said claimed that his polling agents have been forced out of 30 polling agents.
“Ruling party men occupied those centres. They have assaulted our agents,” he told the media after casting his vote at the polling station of Rahima Khatun Government Primary School.
Urging the Election Commission to intervene, Manzu said he, however, will stay in the race.
Speaking to Bangla Tribune correspondents, several voters alleged Awami League supporters of snatching ballot papers from them to stamp on the party’s candidate’s symbol.
“They took away my ballot and then stamped on boat (Awami League’s electoral symbol),” one Abdus Sobhan, who went to vote at a centre for Ward 25, said.
An Awami League supporter, who declined to provide his name, described the centre as an ‘opposition vote bank’. “Since you (the media) are here, we cannot force them out from the centre.”
Inspector Akbar Hossain, security in charge for the centre, however, said that the voting was being held ‘peacefully’.
“Voter turnout was high in the morning, but it has slumped now. We expect it to rise later in the day,” he said.