Bangladesh Khelafat Majlis Ameer Maulana Mamunul Haque, who is the Jamaat-e-Islami-led 11-party alliance backed candidate, has alleged irregularities in the ballot counting process in Dhaka-13, claiming that a flawed ballot design led to the cancellation of thousands of votes cast in his favour.
At around 3:00am today, Mamunul filed a formal complaint with Dhaka-13 Returning Officer Md Yunus Ali at the Election Commission headquarters in Agargaon, Dhaka.
Earlier, around 2:00am, he met the returning officer to raise the same allegations.
Speaking to reporters, Mamunul said the ballot paper in the constituency featured the names of nine candidates arranged in two columns across five rows, leaving one slot blank. His name and election symbol were placed at the bottom of the first column, directly opposite the empty box in the second column.
“As there were nine candidates’ names placed in 10 slots, the last row in the second column remained blank. My name was at the bottom of the first column, right opposite the empty box. Many voters mistakenly stamped the blank box instead of my symbol,” he alleged.
Claiming manipulation in the vote count, Mamunul said that approximately 1,200 of his votes were cancelled in 50 polling centres due to what he described as confusion created by the ballot layout.
He further estimated that nearly 3,000 votes were invalidated across all 137 polling centres in the constituency.
According to results announced by the Election Commission, BNP-backed candidate Bobby Hajjaj, who contested with the “sheaf of paddy” symbol, secured 90,601 votes in Dhaka-13. Mamunul received 86,889 votes, trailing by 2,200.
“The margin between us is not that wide. That is why I came to the Election Commission to inform them of the matter,” Mamunul said.
He also alleged that a similar ballot configuration has been used in Dhaka-8, where BNP candidate Mirza Abbas contested, and claimed that votes marked in the corresponding blank box there were counted as valid.
“The same case happened in Mirza Abbas’s constituency, and there is evidence that those votes were counted. But in my case, a large number of votes were cancelled,” he added.
Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/national-election-2026/news/maulana-mamunul-haque-alleges-irregularities-dhaka-13-ballot-counting-4104986
