Ruqayyah Hall fiasco: A voter's account
Yesterday's voting for the Dhaka University Central Students' Union (Ducsu) and hall union at Ruqayyah Hall was suspended before noon, after students found ballot papers inside metal trunks behind a locked door. A candidate was also apparently attacked and injured at the time. A voter of the hall narrates the chaotic situation:
I went to Ruqayyah Hall with a group of about fifteen girls at around 11am.
We were all quite excited to cast our votes, but the closer we got to the polling booths, the situation started to heat up. At one point, girls around me started saying there were hidden ballot boxes inside the hall. A few candidates from Swatantra Jote and Progotisheel Chhatra Oikya kept saying that the hall union office has been locked since morning, and the authorities must be hiding something.
By the time we reached the metal detector, where volunteers from Bangladesh National Cadet Corps were supposed to punch our hall ID cards, no student was allowed to pass through. This was around 11:30am, possibly when the voting was stopped.
When a group of students approached Bangladesh Chhatra League-backed candidate (for the Ducsu assistant general secretary post) Saddam Hussein, he said the allegations were false, and the incident in Kuwait-Maitree Hall would not be repeated.
A big group of students gathered around the designated office for Ruqayyah Hall Union, demanding that authorities unlock the door and show what is inside. The ruckus kept getting louder, with frequent sloganning.
About 20 minutes later, I saw an apparently-unconscious Nurul Haque Nur, VP candidate from Sadharan Chhatra Adhikar Sangrakkhan Parishad, being carried away by fellow students. He seemed to have been beaten up, and I heard some students mention that BCL activists had attacked him.
A small yard separated the metal detector and the building where the polling room and hall union office are. Girls who had been near the building said Shotontro Jote candidates Auroni and Dipti had also been attacked. By that time, we had waited in queue for almost an hour, with fading hopes of getting to the booth.
Amidst the chaos, we and went near the hall union office to see what was going on. Some girls knocked down the door at around 12:20pm, and found two locked trunks. The trunks were brought outside, and stashes of unmarked ballot papers were found after the locks were broken with bricks.
BCL candidates kept urging us to remain calm, and said that if there really was any plan to steal votes, the ballot papers would be marked.
However, a university teacher who was an election observer, visited the hall at around 1pm and said ballot papers should not be kept locked in a box, regardless of whether they were marked or not.
As we entered the hall union office, we found a door that leads directly into the polling booths. With just one hour to go until the end of voting time, we still had no news on whether we'd be able to cast our votes.
By that time, I had been yelled at by multiple Chhatra League activists for asking too many questions about the ballot papers. We heard nothing from the authorities. Despite trying to wait around “calmly” and cast our votes, it simply wasn't possible.
We left the hall around 1:20pm. None in my group had managed to vote. I found out later that voting at the hall resumed around 3pm and continued till 5pm.
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