The Awami League Parliamentary Board (ALPB) has so far finalised candidates for around 200 constituencies. The decision was taken in a series of meetings, which started from Wednesday, specially arranged to scrutinise the party’s nomination papers. Party insiders said that the ALPB might finalise the names of candidates for the remaining seats by Thursday and start sending nomination letters to the candidates from Friday.
On Wednesday, the ALPB conducted scrutiny on the nomination seekers and finalised candidates for the constituencies of Rangpur, Rajshahi, Khulna and Barisal divisions.
The ALPB sat again on Thursday, with its president and head of the newly formed all-party government Sheikh Hasina in the chair.
Deputy office secretary Mrinal Kanti Das, who attended the meeting, told reporters that the ALPB had finalised candidates for 180 constituencies of Rangpur, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal and some parts of Dhaka and Chittagong divisions till Thursday afternoon. “The board will sit again and finalise the candidates for rest of the constituencies,” he said, adding that after finalising the candidates for 300 constituencies the AL would make it public.
Talking to The Independent, ALPB member Kazi Zafarullah said the final list of AL candidates for the next parliamentary election would be publicly available within a day or two.
Earlier, the ruling party had sold 2,608 forms for party nominations against 300 parliamentary constituencies for the 10th general elections.
On an average, more than eight nomination seekers had collected the forms for each of the constituencies with the hope of getting a party ticket for contesting the next polls. Chief election commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed on Monday had announced the schedule for the 10th parliamentary elections.
In the draft schedule, January 5 was fixed as the election date, Dec 6 as the last date for submission of nomination, Dec 8 and 9 were fixed for scrutiny of nominations, and Dec 17 as the last date for nomination
withdrawal.
-With The Independent input
