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Bangladesh Polls: Please follow this space for all the latest news and updates from Bangladesh as it goes for general elections on Sunday. The polling for the 300-member Bangladeshi Parliament started on Sunday amid pre poll violence and boycott calls by main oppositon Bangladesh Nationalist Party and around 13 other like-minded parties. The BNP began a 48-hour nationwide strike on Saturday against the “illegal government” amidst sporadic violence.
According to country’s Election Commission, a total of 119.6 million registered voters are eligible to vote at Sunday’s polls at over 42,000 polling stations across the country.
As many as 1,970 candidates are in the fray including 90 women and 79 candidates from religious and ethnic minorities. Apart from 28 political parties that are contesting the polls, record 747 independent candidates have filed their nomination with majority of them belonging to the ruling Awami League.
The polls, being held in tight security, will have over 100 observers, including three from India.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Awami League is expected to win for a straight fourth time as the main Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former premier Khaleda Zia, 78, who is under house arrest as a convict of graft charges, boycotted the polls.
The Sunday polls have also been called as contest between ruling Awami League candidates and Awami League independents as out of the total 1,970 candidates in the fray, 747 Independents have filed their nomination with majority of them being from AL.
Incidents of sporadic pre-poll violence marred the country as a passenger train was set ablaze by miscreants on Friday, killing four people and several polling station across the country were also torched, though no casulaties were reported from those attacks.
In a nationally televised address ahead of the polls this week, PM Hasina urged the pro-democratic and law-abiding parties not to fuel ideas that “disrupt” the country’s constitutional process.
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