Hasanul Haque Inu, the president of Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JASAD) and a candidate of the ruling 14-party alliance, has been defeated by independent candidate Kamarul Arefin in Kushtia-2 constituency.
The JASAD chief bagged 92,455 votes, while the winning candidate received 115,799 votes.
As a JASAD candidate, Hasanul Haque Inu failed in the constituency in all elections from 1991 to 2001. He managed to win for the first time in a national election in 2008 as a candidate of the Awami League-led grand alliance.
Since then, he has been contesting in parliamentary elections as a ruling alliance candidate with the boat symbol.
Inu was declared the uncontested winner in the 2014 election, while he won by a significant margin in 2018, with 280,636 votes.
However, the 12th national election was not as smooth for him as the previous two ones, as he faced rivalries from local Awami League leaders and activists.
Kamarul Arefin, the secretary-general of Awami League’s Mirpur upazila unit, challenged the JASAD leader in the constituency and stepped down from the post of upazila parishad chairman to contest in the parliamentary election.
Eventually, Kamarul Arefin won the election, defeating Hasanul Haque Inu.
The winning candidate began his political career through student politics in the 80s. He was an organising secretary of Awami League’s Mirpur upazila unit during the BNP-Jamaat government. Then, he left the locality in the face of acute political rivalries and lawsuits.
In 2008, he returned to Mirpur and joined politics again. He was elected as the chairman of Sadarpur union parishad in 2011 and later as the upazila chairman in 2014 and 2018. Meanwhile, he was made the general secretary of Awami League’s Mirpur upazila unit.