Sushashoner Jonno Nagorik (Shujan), a civil society think tank, on Sunday urged the Election Commission (EC) to sincerely investigate the allegations of irregularities in the 11th national parliamentary elections.
The leaders of the platform said the election held on December 30 was a participatory one but it was not spontaneous due to absence of a level-playing field for all political parties.
Besides, Shujan, in its report prepared on the last election, mentioned that 61.07 per cent or 182 lawmakers-elect out of the total 298 are businessmen in profession.
The platform came up with the call and observations at a post-poll press conference to 'present information of the winning candidates of the 11th national election' organised at the Dhaka Reporters' Unity (DRU) in the city.
Shujan president M Hafizuddin Khan, its secretary Dr Badiul Alam Majumdar, central coordinator Dilip Kumar Sarker and executive member Syeda Rizwana Hasan spoke at the programme.
Presenting the report, Mr Sarker said the Grand Alliance (Mohajote) saw a landslide victory in the election while performance of Jatiya Oikya Front (JOF) and BNP-led 20-party Alliance was catastrophic.
He underlined election irregularities and organisational weakness as key reasons behind JOF and 20-party alliance's poor performance in the polls.
According to the election results published by the EC, grand alliance won in 288 constituencies, JOF and 20-party alliance in seven seats and independent candidates in three.
The Shujan secretary said the EC was somewhat 'indifferent' about the electoral violence, attack on opposition candidates, and submission of false information in affidavits by the nomination hopefuls.
"We hope the commission will take effective steps to investigate the allegations regarding the national election in a transparent manner," Mr Badiul added.
Mrs Rizwana, also the chief executive of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), said the election was participatory but it was not held in spontaneous atmosphere.
Indicating absolute dominance of grand alliance in the parliament, she said balance in the parliament make the lawmakers accountable for their work but this scope will come down in next parliament.
The Shujan report noted that the voting day did not see widespread bloodshed; even then small-scale violence claimed 17 lives on the day.
Besides, another six people have died since beginning of electioneering on December 10. However, most of the deceased were activists or supporters of the grand alliance.
Among the electoral irregularities, significant allegations include - driving out polling agents of JOF from polling centres, ballot stuffing in favour of grand alliance candidates during the night before polls, bringing ballot boxes filled with ballots in polling centres from outside, running out of ballot papers in some polling centres by 11am to 11:30am, forcing voters to stamp ballots publicly in some centres and showing unusually high or low number of votes cast in a number of centres.
Mr Sarker also said there are allegations against a number of election officials and members of law enforcement agencies that they aided in many poll irregularities.
Presenting information of newly elected MPs, he said out of the total 182 businessmen cum MPs, 174 represent the grand alliance, five are from Jatiya Oikya Front (JOF) and BNP-led 20 party alliance and three are independent.
Lawmakers from other professions include - lawyers 38, agriculturists 13, job holders 14 and others 48.
The report was prepared based on the election results of 298 constituencies out of the 300 as election was postponed in Gaibandha-3 due to death of a candidate and the EC halted voting in Brahmanbaria-2.
In terms of educational qualifications, Shujan found that 241 or 80.87 per cent of the new MPs are graduate or postgraduate while the rate is 81.94 per cent for the grand alliance, 57.14 per cent for JOF and 33.33 per cent for independent MPs.
Currently, there are cases against 21 or 7.04 per cent lawmakers, 19 from grand alliance and two from JOF while 122 or 40.97 per cent MPs were accused in different cases in the past.
Mr Sarker said it is a positive development that around 63.08 per cent or 188 of the new lawmakers pay income tax. 16.77 per cent of them pay more than a million taka as income tax while 27.85 per cent pay Tk 0.1 million to Tk 0.5 million.
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