BNP wins Sylhet mayoral polls

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) candidate Ariful Haque Chowdhury was unofficially elected Sylhet city mayor, defeating ruling Awami League candidate Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran by 6,196 votes.

Ariful bagged 92,593 votes while Kamran got 86,397 votes, said returning officer of the mayoral elections to Sylhet City Corporation, Md Alimuzzaman.

He declared the unofficial results on Saturday evening after the results of re-voting, postponed on 30 July for irregularities, were announced today, Saturday.

After the results were declared, Ariful was greeted with flowers by his supporters, activists and others.

"I could have won the polls in a big margin if the elections held on 30 July were fair and peaceful," Ariful told Prothom Alo.

"But, I never lost faith in people. They rewarded me for keeping faith in them. Therefore, I won despite so many incidents of vote rigging and irregularities," he added.

The unofficially-elected mayor, however, said he would concentrate more on increasing services of Sylhet city dwellers and development of the city.

Re-voting in two centres of Sylhet City Corporation polls-- at Gazi Burhanuddin Garam Dewan Government Primary School and Hobinandi Government Primary School -- began on Saturday morning to determine the mayor of the city corporation.

On 1 August, the election commission set the date for re-election.

After 30 July's polls, BNP's Ariful took a lead of 4,626 votes in 132 centres out of 134. Ariful bagged 90,496 votes while ruling Awami League’s Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran got 85,870.