Mayor aspirant of Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) AL leader Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran has urged the Election Commission (EC) to relax electoral code of conduct in the local body election for the sake of conducting polls campaign smoothly. On the other hand, BNP backed candidate for the mayoral post Ariful Haque Chowdhury urged the EC to deploy army in and around the city corporation area to hold the election in an impartial and transparent manner.
They expressed theirs views at a view exchange meeting of the EC held at Zila Parishad auditorium in the district on Monday.
During the meeting, returning officers asked the mayor and councillor aspirants to follow the electoral code of conduct for the sake of holding of a free and fair election. Defending his proposal, Kamran said that the EC had fixed the limit for setting up of campaign centres to six, which was not enough to cover the entire SCC.
The candidates will face problem in their campaign if the number of camps are not increased to nine, he added.
Ariful Haque Chowdhury has lodged an allegation before the EC officials that a vested group was engaged destroying and damaging his campaign materials violating the election code of conduct.
He also alleged that the armed gang of the 14-party backed mayor candidate was creating panic among voters and if it continued the voters could not cast their votes free and fair manners, he added.
“So to ensure free and fair election, law enforcers from different law enforcement agencies and army will have to be deployed to avert any untoward incident ahead of the election,” he argued.
-With The Independent input
