7 to vie for CCC mayor post

Nomination papers of seven mayoral candidates for Chattogram City Corporation election were ruled legal by the regional election office yesterday.

Hasanuzzaman, regional election officer of Chattogram, okayed the nomination papers of the candidates after verifying their affidavits and other related documents at the district's Shilpakala Academy.

The election office rejected nomination papers of two independent mayoral candidates.

Besides mayoral candidates, nomination papers of councillor candidates for general and reserved seats are also being verified by the election office.

The mayor contestants are Awami League's Rezaul Karim Chowdhury; BNP's Shahadat Hossain; Jatiya Party's Solaiman Alam; Bangladesh Islami Front's MA Matin; People's Party's Abul Manjur; Islamic Front Bangladesh's Md Wahed Murad and Islami Andolon Bangladesh's Md Jannatul Islam.

Hasanuzzaman said nomination papers of Mohammed Tanjir Abedin and Khokan Chowdhury were rejected as there were some discrepancies in their documents.

On February 27, nine candidates for mayoral post and 278 candidates for councillor posts submitted their nomination papers to contest the CCC polls, scheduled for March 29.

During the declaration of legality of their candidature yesterday, Rezaul and Shahadat sat next to each other and was seen exchanging pleasantries.

Afterwards, Shahadat told reporters that if a free and fair environment exist throughout the election, their party will come out victorious.

"Since the beginning of the election procedure, we have been experiencing discriminatory behaviour from the administration and police," he alleged. He also demanded that the authorities must make it mandatory to show NID cards at the polling centres.

Rezaul, on the other hand, said he was confident of winning.