AL’s Golap lost polls to independent candidate Tahmina

Incumbent MP and Awami League nominated candidate from the Madaripur-3 constituency Abdus Sobhan Alias Golap was defeated by independent candidate Tahmina Begum (eagle symbol) by a huge margin.

Tahmina Begum has bagged 96,633 votes while her nearest contestant Abdus Sobhan got 61,971 votes.

Tahmina Begum was unofficially declared the winner with 34,662 more votes than the ruling party candidate. Assistant returning officer and Kalkini upazila nirbahi officer Uttam Kumar Das declared the unofficial result at 9.10 pm Sunday.

Abdus Sobhan is the publicity and publications secretary of the Bangladesh Awami League. Tahmina Begum is an incumbent MP from the reserved women seats in the parliament and president of Kalkini upazila Awami League. The upazila Awami League brought out celebratory processions from all over the upazila after getting confirmation about her win.

Tahmina Begum’s supporters claimed that the followers of the Awami League nominated candidate tried to take control of several polling centres. The two sides locked into a clash and chase and counter-chase over this. There were also allegations of forcefully stuffing the ballots against the Awami League activists. However, the voting in this constituency ended without any big incidents of violence due to the promptness of the administration.

Besides, there were allegations of obstructing Tahmina Begum’s electoral campaigns against the followers of Abdus Sobhan right from the start in addition to the complaints of bomb attack and killing one of Tahmina’s supporters.

Speaking regarding the poll results, upazila Awami League general secretary Toufiquzzaman Shaheen said, “Truth has won today. The people have defeated a corrupted MP. We were hopeful about winning by a huge margin if the election was free and fair.”

According to the district electoral office, the Jatiya Party candidate (JaPa) Md Abdul Khaleque has got 533 votes, Prabin Halder of Trinamul BNP 434 votes, Nitai Chakrabarty of the Bangladesh Supreme Party 193 votes and Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Janata League candidate Nakul Kumar Biswas has got 263 votes in the Madaripur-3 constituency.

The Madaripur-3 constituency comprises 15 unions of the Kalkini and Dasar upazila, 1 pourashava (municipality) and five unions in the Madaripur Sadar upazila. The total number of voters in this constituency was 357,856.