Heated arguments halt BGMEA polls briefly
FBCCI President Annisul Huq makes a point in a heated argument during the BGMEA election in Dhaka yesterday. Photo: STAR
The BGMEA polls came to a 30-minute halt yesterday due to heated arguments over an alleged move by FBCCI President Annisul Huq to seek votes for a candidate at the election centre in Dhaka.
The chairman of the BGMEA election board, M Anisuzzaman, suspended voting from 9:30am to 10am after some supporters of Sammilito Parishad protested the FBCCI president's "flagrant backing" for Shahadat Hossain Kiron, a presidential candidate.
The Sammilito Parishad backers have argued that the president of the apex trade body, FBCCI, "must not seek votes" for a candidate.
"After taking opinion from all, I resumed the voting from 10am," Anisuzzaman said. The voting ended half an hour late at 4:30pm.
Anisuzzaman said the supporters of both panels got a bit carried away by the incident but it was stopped from lurching into a scuffle by some BGMEA voters on the scene.
The chief of the BGMEA election board said the preliminary estimate shows more than 80 percent of the votes had been cast in the election.
Of the total 2,678 voters, 2,122 are registered with the Dhaka office and 556 with the Chittagong office.
The voters went to the polls to elect 27 members to the Board of Directors for the BGMEA for 2009-2010.
Asked, Annisul Huq, also a former BGMEA president, said some supporters of Sammilito Parishad had argued with him as he went here to cast vote.
"Nobody should stop me from casting my vote, as I'm a member of the BGMEA," he said.
"It's true that I'm the FBCCI president, but I'm also a voter of the association. So, there's nothing wrong to go over there and cast my vote," Huq said.
On the incident, Abdus Salam Murshedy, panel leader of Sammilito Parishad, said he had been on the scene during the incident.
Murshedy said some voters had asked Huq to leave the place after his vote was cast, as he is the president of the FBCCI, a post according to him is neutral.
But the election came to a peaceful end, as the incident had been resolved thanks to intervention by the chief of the election board and Anwar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury Parvez, BGMEA president.
No untoward incident was reported in the election at the Chittagong centre.
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