AL wins in Rajshahi, Barishal; BNP in Sylhet

Awami League mayoral runner AHM Khairuzzaman Liton and BNP candidate Ariful Haque Chowdhury have won their respective city polls while the ruling party candidate in Barishal Serniabat Sadiq Abdullah has a clear lead by a huge margin.
Liton defeated his rival BNP candidate Mosaddek Hossain Bulbul by a considerable margin while Ariful Haque Chowdhury, the BNP mayoral candidate in the city polls, is slightly ahead of his Awami League contestant Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran.
According to results of the total 138 polling centres, Liton secured a total of 1,65,050 votes while his nearest contestant Bulbul got 77, 690 votes.
Ariful has taken a lead by 4,626 votes based on results of 132 polling centres out of 134, according to the returning official.
Ariful bagged 90,496 votes while Kamran got 85,870 votes, according to different sources.
The returning official, however, has not declared Ariful the winner since the results of the rest two centres were suspended.
Meanwhile in Barishal, Awami League candidate Serniabat Sadiq Abdullah has taken the lead by a huge margin in Barisal City Corporation (BCC) elections that ended amid allegations of massive vote rigging and irregularities.
According to the results of 107 polling centres of out 123, Serniabat Sadiq Abdullah got 1,07, 353 votes while his rival BNP’s Mujibur Rahman Sarwar bagged 13,135 votes, returning officer Md Mujibur Rahman announced the results at regional election commission office in Barisal city on Monday night.
Earlier, Sarwar, Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) candidate Abul Kalam Azad and Islami Andolan Bangladesh candidate Obaidur Rahman boycotted the city elections with complaints of widespread vote rigging and manipulation.
Election Commission Secretary Helaluddin Ahmed told at a press meet at Dhaka in the afternoon that there were scattered incidents, but the election was conducted fairly.
“There is no reason to be either satisfied or dissatisfied with the election environment,” the EC secretary said in response to a question.
He added that the evidences do not match with the allegations made by some candidates. However, he mentioned that there were scattered incidents among councillor aspirants in Barishal.
“There were some problems in Sylhet, but it went well in Rajshahi,” Helaluddin added.