Varying accounts have led to confusions over the number of seats HM Ershad-led Jatiya Party has won in the 11the parliamentary election.

The Election Commission (EC) has announced that the party has won 20 seats in the voting held on Dec 30. However, the number is in fact 22, it is understood. Both the commission and party are baffled as the matter is yet to be clarified.

At the early hours of Dec 31, EC secretary Helaluddin Ahmed announced candidates who contested with Awami League’s logo ‘boat’ won in 259 seats while ‘plough’, the polls logo of Jatiya Party, secured win in 20 seats.

Although the EC secretary made an error during the announcement over another seat won by Jatiya Party, he later corrected it.

The two seats in question are Dhaka-6 and Mymensingh-8, which the Commission database has listed as won by the Awami League, are in fact won by candidates of the Jatiya Party, according to EC sources.

Due to this error, the polls result show two more seats for the Awamai League while two less for Jatiya Party. The corrected seat tally should be 257 and 22 for Awami League and Jatiya Party respectively, said the sources.

Speaking to Bangla Tribune late on Wednesday (Jan 2) EC Secretary Ahmed said, “There could be some errors as we hastily announced the results upon your (the media) requests on the night of Dec 30.”

“As we have been busy over publishing the gazette notification on the polls results, we didn’t get the scope to verify it,” he added.

“We will look into it,” assured the secretary.

The Jatiya Party says even they are baffled over the issue.

“We heard that we won 20 seats, and then we came to know it is in fact 22,” its Co-Chairman and MP-elect GM Quader told Bangla Tribune.