BCL men stamp ballots for boat in Curzon Hall

Leaders-activists of ruling Awami League’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League forcibly entered a polling station at Curzon Hall in Dhaka University to vote for the boat candidate of Dhaka-8 constituency.

The incident took place at around 3:15pm. Prothom Alo received video footage of the incident of ballot stuffing at the polling station.

Several witnesses of the incident told Prothom Alo that a group of BCL men entered the Curzon Hall center and approached to cast their votes using false identities. They started ballot stamping indiscriminately for the boat symbol.  The journalists present there inquired about their identity. Some of them threatened the journalists while some tried to pacify them.  At one point the newsmen left the scene and a huge number of BCL men swarmed into the polling station. They joined hands in ballot stamping. The BCL men left hurriedly as another group of journalists reached the polling station.

Witnesses said the presiding officer Rabiul Islam expressed his helplessness to the journalists over the incident.

After the vote counting, the presiding officer announced that a total of 453 votes were cast in the center against 2,479 votes. Boat received 432 votes while five other voters shared 21 votes. Nine votes were declared illegitimate.

Dhaka-8 parliamentary seat consists of nine wards of Ramna and Motijheel thanas in Dhaka south city corporation.

Awami League’s joint secretary general AFM Bahauddin Nasim is the candidate pf boat from this constituency.