Probe body submits report on Gaibandha-5 by-polls
The probe committee formed to look into the Gaibandha-5 by-election, which the Election Commission (EC) postponed citing irregularities, has submitted its report.
Election Commission's Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath who headed the committee said they went to the residence of EC Secretary Humayun Kabir Khandaker and submitted the report. But he refused to discuss the findings.
When contacted, the EC secretary said he was out of Dhaka for some election-related work and had not seen the report yet.
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He said he would hand over the report to the commission by next Sunday after returning to Dhaka.
According to sources, the committee took statements from 622 people including Gaibandha's deputy commissioner, superintendent of police, presiding and assistant presiding officers, and members of law enforcement agencies.
Most of them claimed that the polling environment was fair and there were no irregularities. When they were shown the CCTV footage of the polling station, many of them admitted the irregularities.
However, some even implied this was a normal scenario of voting, according to sources.
The probe committee found 100 people's involvement in the irregularities, the sources claimed.
On 13 October, a three-member inquiry committee was formed under the leadership of EC Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath. The other two members of this committee are EC Joint Secretary Kamal Uddin Biswas and Shahedunnabi Chowdhury.
The committee was supposed to submit its report on Monday but missed the deadline. Later it gets three more days to submit the report on Thursday.
On October 12, Kazi Habibul Awal Commission sat in the election building of Dhaka and monitored all the polling centers in the Gaibandha-5 by-elections with CCTV cameras.
Four hours after polling, polling at 51 centres out of 145 were postponed.
Later, he postponed the whole election an hour and a half before the end of the poll.
