DHAKA :
BANGLADESH Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina is set to secure
a record fourth straight term
as her Awami League party was
on Sunday leading in most of
the seats in the general elections marred by sporadic violence and a boycott by the main
Opposition BNP and its allies.
Hasina won the Gopalganj3 seat for the eighth time since
1986. She bagged 249,965 votes
while her nearest rival M Nizam Uddin Lashkar from the
Bangladesh Supreme Party
secured just 469 votes,
bdnews24 reported.
The 76-year-old leader,
who has been ruling the
strategically located South
Asiannation since 2009,is set
to secure a record fourth consecutive term and fifth overall termin the one-sided election. According to the Daily
Star newspaper, Awami
League has so far won 8 out
of 9 seats in the 300-member parliament. The Jatiya
Party has won one seat.
However, the Dhaka
Tribune newspaper reported
that the Awami League has
won in 79 constituencies
while the Jatiya Party secured
five seats. Independent candidates won the race in 23
seats,itadded.Awami League
General Secretary Obaidul
Quader claimed that the people have rejected the BNPand
Jamaat-e-Islami’s boycott of
the election by casting their
ballots. “I sincerely thank
those who braved the fear of
vandalism, arson, and terrorism to participate in the
12th national parliamentary
elections,” Quader said.
Jatiya Party Chairman GM
Quader won the Rangpur-3
seatinthe12thnationalparliamentary election.
According to the initial estimates, the voter turn out was
around 40 per cent but the
figure could change after the
final count, Chief Election
Commissioner Kazi Habibul
Awal earlier said. The 2018
general election recorded an
overall turn out of more than
80 per cent. Earlier, the voting ended at 4 pm. An election commissions pokesman
said that other than some
sporadic incidents of violence, the voting was largely
peaceful in 299 of the 300
constituencies. The
Commission suspended
polling in one seat because
of the death of a candidate.The election commission
cancelled the candidature of
a ruling Awami League candidate in northeastern
Chattogram at thefag-end of
the voting hours a she“scolded and threatened” a police
officer.The development left
the polls in the constituency
to be contested by two rebel
candidates who belong to the
ruling party as well.The voterturn out was low as the ailingjailedex-premier Khaleda
Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist
Party (BNP) stayed away from
the polls asking people to
boycott it.