EC hears 24 appeals in first session on 3rd day of nomination hearings

The Election Commission (EC) today conducted the third day of hearings against returning officers’ decisions on nomination papers for the 13th National Parliamentary Election, scheduled for February 12.

The first session of the day-long hearings began at 10:10am and ended shortly after 11:15am at the EC headquarters in Agargaon, Dhaka.

During the first session, the EC heard 24 appeals. Of these, 16 nominations were declared valid, five were declared not valid, two appeals were kept pending for further hearing, and one appeal was declared “not pressed”.

Earlier, a total of 645 appeals were filed between January 5 and 9 against decisions made by returning officers during scrutiny of nomination papers.

Hearings began on January 10 and will continue until January 18. The EC plans to hear appeals of around 280 candidates each day, with proceedings scheduled from 10:00am to 5:00pm daily.

Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin is leading the hearings.

Of the 2,568 nomination papers submitted for the 13th general election, returning officers initially accepted 1,842 and rejected 723 during scrutiny.

The appeals rejected during today’s session include:

Natore-2: NPP candidate GAA Mubin’s nomination was cancelled as he did not meet eligibility requirements related to government service.

Chattogram-11: Gano Odhikar Parishad candidate Muhammad Nezam Uddin’s nomination was cancelled due to a loan default of Tk 97,991.

Chattogram-9 (Kotwali): Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami candidate Dr AKM Fazlul Haque’s nomination was cancelled as he holds US citizenship.

Feni-2: Independent candidate Md Ismail failed to secure the mandatory one percent of voter support.

In Chattogram-5, the appeal of independent candidate Shakila Farzana was declared “not pressed”.