AL picks Nuruddin Chowdhury for Lakshmipur-2 by polls

Awami League on Saturday nominated Nuruddin Chowdhury Nayan, the party’s Lakshmipur district unit general secretary, to contest the Lakshmipur-2 constituency by-election, reports UNB.

Awami League picked its candidate for contesting the election at a meeting of its local government nomination board held at Ganabhaban with party president and prime minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

The parliamentary constituency (Lakshmipur-2) was declared vacant after independent parliamentarian Mohammad Shahid Islam alias Kazi Papul was sentenced by a Kuwaiti court for a criminal offense.

The parliament secretariat on Monday issued a gazette notification declaring that the Lakshmipur-2 constituency (Parliamentary Seat-275) fell vacant on 28 January, 2021, the date of the court's sentence.

According to the gazette, Papul is ineligible to remain an MP under Article 66 (2) (Gha) of the constitution as he was sentenced by Kuwaiti criminal court to four-year rigorous imprisonment on 28 January.

MP Papul is currently in Kuwait jail after he was arrested there in June last on charges of human trafficking, residency visa trading and money laundering.

On 28 January last, a Kuwaiti court sentenced Papul and four others to four years jail and fined 1.9 million Kuwaiti dinars in a bribery case.