Shahadat Hossain takes oath as Chattogram mayor
On 1 October, a Chattogram court declared Shahadat Hossain mayor-elect of the Chattogram City Corporation after he filed a lawsuit seeking to cancel the election results over "vote rigging"
Dr Shahadat Hossain has been sworn in as the mayor of Chattogram City Corporation (CCC).
The oath-taking ceremony took place today (3 November) in the conference room of the Local Government Division in Dhaka, said Aziz Ahmed, the public relations officer of the city corporation.
He said the oath was officiated by AF Hasan Arif, an adviser to the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development, and Co-operatives.
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On 1 October, a Chattogram court declared Shahadat Hossain mayor-elect of the Chattogram City Corporation after he filed a lawsuit seeking to cancel the election results over "vote rigging."
The court of Electoral Tribunal and the Joint District and Sessions Judge Mohammad Khairul Amin also ordered the Election Commission to publish a gazette within 10 days.
Eight days after the judgment, on 8 October, the Election Commission (EC) declared Shahadat the CCC mayor.
On 17 October, the LGRD ministry issued a revised notification, excluding Chattogram from the notification concerning the removal of city corporation mayors that was initially issued on 19 August.
On 24 February 2021, Shahadat filed a lawsuit against the Election Commission and nine others centring the Chattogram City Corporation election.
In the lawsuit, he made allegations of election rigging and sought to cancel the results.
The defendants in the case included recently removed Chattogram mayor M Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, regional election officer, secretary to the election commissioner, and chief election commissioner, among others.
The case documents stated that Chattogram City Corporation officials began "coordinating" with Rezaul Karim just after the allocation of the "boat" symbol.
"This suggests that the election day was merely a formality. For this reason, a vote tally has still not been provided. No printed copies from the EVMs were distributed from any polling station," reads the document.
"By the afternoon of the election day, only 4-6% of the votes had been cast. However, the election results showed that 22% of the votes had been cast," it added.
As per the official election results, the "boat" candidate Rezaul Karim Chowdhury won with 369,248 votes in the election held on 27 January 2021.
His closest competitor, BNP mayoral candidate Shahadat Hossain, received 52,489 votes under the "sheaf of paddy" symbol.
