The elections to the Khulna City Corporation (KCC) will be held on 12 June from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm without any break. According to the election schedule, the candidates will be able to continue their election campaign until Saturday midnight.
At the same time, the Election Commission (EC) has imposed a ban on vehicular movement within the city from 12:00 am Sunday. Therefore, the candidates are now fully occupied in last-minute electioneering.
According to the office of the returning officer, there are five mayoral candidates, 136 councillor candidates in 31 wards and 39 candidates for the post of councillors of the 10 reserved wards in the KCC polls this time.
There are 535,529 voters in the Khulna City Corporation, including 266,696 females. Voting to the KCC will be held in 1,732 voting booths in a total of 289 polling centres. Already, the works on installing some 2,310 CCTV cameras to constantly monitor the polling centres are complete.
The ruling Awami League has nominated Talukder Abdul Khaleque, the outgoing mayor and president of the Khulna city Awami League, as their mayoral candidate again. He started campaigning at 9:00 am on Sunday from the Urdu speaking camp in ward 12 under the Khalishpur police station. He will also campaign in ward 13 and 15 today. Then he will campaign in ward 31 and exchange views with residents of the Banda Bazar area in the city.
Shafiqul Islam taking part in the KCC polls as the Jatiya Party nominated mayoral candidate. He is also the president of Khulna district Jatiya Party. He too started electioneering at 9:00 am today from in front of the PBI (Police Bureau of Investigation) office on the Haji Mohsin Road in ward 29. He will conduct election campaigns in different parts of each ward all day. He is also scheduled to attend a rally in the city’s Dakbangla area later in the day.
Islami Andolon Bangladesh’s mayoral candidate Abdul Awal started campaigning from 11:00 am in the morning on Saturday in the Barabazar and Rail Station area in ward 21. He continued campaigning there until noon. He is also to attend several rallies in different parts of the city, including the Dakbangla, Satrasta intersection, Gallamari intersection, Sonadanga, Khulna Medical College and in the New Market areas, from afternoon.
Jaker Party’s mayoral candidate SM Sabbir Hossain started from 9:00 am today from the Daulatpur market area. He will also attend rallies and visit different places of the city, according to his election campaign committee.
SM Shafiqur Rahman is the lone independent mayoral candidate in the KCC polls this time. He contested in the KCC polls for the mayoral post with the nomination from the JaPa last time. Shafiqur Rahman attended a rally in the Shibbari intersection area of the city at 7:30 am in the morning today. He will attend several meetings and rallies in different parts of the city later.
The councillor candidates are also passing busy times in electioneering. They have been busy campaigning and communicating with the voters since the morning.
Ban on vehicular movement
The Election Commission has imposed a ban on movements of different types of vehicles. Motorcycles won’t be allowed on the roads in areas under the KCC from Saturday midnight to 13 June midnight.
Besides, a ban has been imposed on the movements of truck, bus, minibus, microbus, jeeps, pick-ups, private cars and easy-bikes for 24 hours from 11 June midnight.
However, this provision will be relaxed for the candidates and their polling agents, subjected to permission from the EC, and local and foreign tourists.
Apart from this, vehicles used in emergency services such as ambulance, fire service, electricity, gas, postal and telecommunication will be out of this ban, the EC notification said.