‘What can we do if BNP polling agents don’t come?’

Only the opposition candidates can explain the reasons for their polling agents not showing up at the centres, chief election commissioner (CEC) KM Nurul Huda has said.

“What can we do if the agents of ‘sheaf of paddy’ (BNP’s electoral symbol) do not come?” the CEC said in reply to the journalists’ question as to why there was no agent of Bangladesh Nationalist Party at the IES School and College polling centre at Uttara Sector-5 in Dhaka, where he went to cast his vote in the 11th parliamentary elections on Sunday.
No one complained over any obstacles to enter the voting centres, he said. When the journalists asked him if he had seen any BNP polling agent at the centre, he said he did not notice that.

Barring a few exceptions, the situation is fine all over the country, the CEC claimed. The returning officers, police and the law enforcement were given directives to carry out their specific duties, he said.

All the centres couldn’t be controlled staying in Dhaka, but voting will be postponed if the situation was out of control, Nurul Huda said.

Voting was suspended at the centres where irregularities broke out, and if the situation improves, voting would be resumed at these centres later, he further said.

On the allegations that the voters at some centres are being forced to vote for Boat, the CEC said he had not heard anything like that.

When asked if this election could remove the previous election’s stigma, he said, “Let the election be finished first.”