Jatiya Party (JP) scripted a crushing defeat for its political ally Awami League in the Rangpur mayoral elections with a landslide victory. Traditionally, Rangpur has been a stronghold for JP chief HM Ershad.

As per unofficial results, JP mayor candidate Mostafizar Rahman Mostafa bagged 160,489 votes with party symbol ‘plough’, beating his nearest rival Awami League candidate Sharfuddin Ahmed Jhantu by 98,089 votes. Jhantu managed 62,400 votes with ‘boat’ symbol. Another heavyweight, BNP’s Kawsar Zaman Babla, finished third with 35,136 votes for party symbol 'paddy sheaf'.

Returning Officer Subhash Chandra Sarkar announced the results and declared Mostafizar Rahman Mostafa elelcted unofficially around 12:15am. Besides seven mayoral candidates, 211 candidates contested for 33 posts of general ward councillors while 65 fought for posts of councillors in 11 reserved wards in the city elections.

A total of 3,93,994 voters -- 1,96,356 men and 1,97,638 women -- were supposed to cast votes in the election. The returning officer said announced the turnout to be 74 per cent.

Voting started at 8am and continued without a break till 4 pm. Around 5,500 law enforcers were deployed to provide security during the election. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) KM Nurul Huda said the commission was satisfied with the “peaceful and fair” polls.

Even the candidates, especially the mayoral aspirants, expressed satisfaction with the voting atmosphere. Though the BNP mayoral candidate raised some allegations of vote rigging, the CEC turned them down.

Amid the usual vote cast through ballot papers, the EC also introduced the electronic voting machine (EVM) at one centre on a trial basis ahead of largescale use of such machines in other elections.

According to the EC, seven mayoral candidates contested the polls, while 211 aspirants vied for general ward councillor posts and 65 women aspirants for reserved councillor posts.

People said the mayoral contest will be mainly among three candidates—Awami League’s Sharfuddin Ahmed Jhantu, BNP’s Kawsar Zaman Babla and Jatiya Party’s Mostafizar Rahman Mostafa.

Jatiya Party chairman HM Ershad, who cast his vote at the Senpara Shishu Mongol Government Primary School polling centre, said the election was a test for the EC before the parliamentary polls. He also said the election was peaceful and there were no reports of irregularities.

Ershad’s nephew, Hossain Makbul Shahriar, contested the election as an independent mayoral candidate after the party nominated Mostafiz for the post in the civic polls.

The mayoral candidates cast their votes at separate centres. Jhantu cast his vote at Guptopara Salema Girls High School, Babla at Mahiganj Dewandigi Government Primary School and Mostafa at Alamnagar Government Primary School in the morning.

This was the first time that the RCC polls was held under party banner. In Rangpur’s first mayoral polls in 2012, Jhantu had defeated his nearest rival Mostafa by 30,000 votes.

In that election, Jhantu had bagged 106,255 votes, Mostafiz polled 77,835 votes, Jatiya Party-backed AKM Abdur Rouf Manik got 37,208 votes, and BNP-backed Kawsar Jahan won 21,235 votes.

EC sources said a total of 393,994 voters had cast their ballots in this election. Of them, 196,356 were men and 197,638 were women.

The presence of women voters in large numbers early in the morning at different polling stations even in the biting cold was a striking feature of yesterday’s election, sources said.

The EC had earmarked 128 among the 193 polling stations as risky and beefed up security measures by deploying additional law enforcers.

As part of additional security measures, the EC had set up CCTV cameras at three polling stations. Besides, the poll panel had set up two monitoring cells—one in Rangpur and the other in the EC Secretariat in Dhaka.

The commission also deployed 22 officials as observers to monitor the overall poll situation.

The returning officer, Subhab Chandra, said the turnout of voters was satisfactory. He added that polling was held peacefully and no untoward incident was reported from any centre.

Under the current EC, this was the second major election after the Comilla City Corporation polls in March.