A polling officer at the city’s St Joseph Technical School centre of Dhaka -6 constituency, alleged that about 100 unknown people entered his centre at about 3:30 pm on Sunday and snatched ballot papers from the polling officers to put seal on them to show higher voter turnout at over 50 percent.
Requesting anonymity, the polling officer, a teacher of Government Laboratory High School deployed at the centre, said that until that time, the total turnout at the centre was 627 out of 2,566 voters.
“These strangers forced us to show it to be more than 51 percent,” he told reporters at the Jatiya Press Club at 6:30 pm while giving an account of his polling centre.
He said the presiding officer of the centre sought help of the police deployed there to tackle the situation. But, police refusal to help compelled the presiding and polling officers to make a compromise with the strangers to show the voter turnout to be 1,500-plus from the actual 627.
The alleging polling officer claimed that he and some of his colleagues then left the centre to avert any attack by the outsiders.
When contacted, a female polling officer at the centre confirmed the incident, but said her booth was peaceful.
However, the presiding officer at the centre was not available at his mobile phone to learn his comment about the incident.
In the Dhaka-6 constituency, there were three candidates — Kazi Firoz Rashid of Jatiya Party (Plough), independent candidate Shahid Commissioner (Elephant) and another independent candidate (Hut).
Source: UNbConnect
