Rangpur city polls today

The stage was all set on Wednesday for holding the Rangpur City Corporation election today amid cold wave affecting the regular city life.
Chief election commissioner KM Nurul Huda at a press conference in Dhaka said that he hoped the election would be held in a free and fair manner as the commission had taken necessary initiatives.
He also urged the city people to exercise their voting rights in a festive mode.
EC officials said that they had completed necessary preparations for the polls amid apprehensions of violence with 108 out of 193 polling centres being identified as risky by intelligence agencies.
Locals said that they anticipated the election to be a high voltage affair that would be watched closely at the national level as it would be, for the first time, held in a partisan manner.
Ahead of the next general election, the civic body election is a major one as the dominant parties — Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jatiya Party — have a strong presence in the locality.
Mohammad Shahjahan, a voter from ward-26, expected the polling to be peaceful. He said that the ordinary people were not worried about the law and order situation, but cold waves might cause a poor turnout during the first half of the polling day.
Shefali Begum, a voter from ward-12, said that she was happy with the law and order situation and would go to the polling centre to cast her vote as soon as the voting opened. 
Rangpur Press Club president Sadrul Alam Dulu said that the election was a challenge for Jatiya Party and BNP as their failure could put their political existence in the locality in jeopardy.
Sammilita Sangskritik Jote district unit president Kazi Mohammad Junnun had no doubt about the election being peaceful.
Awami League candidate Sarfuddin Ahmed Jhantu said that the people would re-elect him as mayor so that he could carry on with the development works of the past five years.
Jatiya Party candidate Mostafizur Rahman said that he was hopeful of wining the election with a huge margin as the city was a ‘vote bank’ of his party.
BNP candidate Kawsar Jahan Babla suspected that the ruling party might create anarchy to win the election. He said that he would be elected if the polls were peaceful.
Election commissioner M Rafiqul Islam said that two 24-hour monitoring cells — one in Rangpur and another in EC of secretariat — would be in operation during the polls.
He added that over 5,500 law enforcers would be deployed.
Returning officer Subhash Chandra Sarker said that ballot boxes, ballot papers and necessary voting materials had been distributed among the presiding officers.
Rangpur range deputy inspector general of police Golam Faruk said that they had taken all preparations so that the voters could cast their votes peacefully.
According to EC officials, 2,231 police personnel and 515 village defence force members have been deployed to guard the 193 vote centres and 18 platoon BGB members have been deployed in 36 groups in the city.
The CEC said that they could not confirm the use of Electronic Voting Machines in the polls until Thursday. ‘It will take time until tomorrow [Thursday] to be sure about the use of EVM in Rangpur city polls as technical issues are involved,’ he said.
There are some 3,93,994 voters in 33 wards of Rangpur city. Of them 1,96,356 are male and 197,638 are female voters. The commanding area of the city is 203.6 square kilometres.
The first RCC election was held on December 20, 2012, in which AL-backed Sharfuddin was elected as mayor.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net