AL candidate loses in Hasina\\\'s citadel

BNP-backed candidate Nur Mohammad Mandal has been elected chairman in Pirganj Upazila Parishad elections in Rangpur district, a parliamentary constituency from where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was elected in the national polls. The vote, in the first phase of local body elections, in Pirganj Upazila (UZ) was held on Monday. It was supposed to take place on February 19 along with other 97 UZs, but was deferred because of a by-poll there. Assistant Returning Officer ATM Ziaul Islam announced the results of 106 polling centres late on Monday night. The results showed that Nur Mohammad Mandal beat his Awami League (AL)-blessed rival Sayadat Hossain by over 4,000 votes. Mandal bagged 74,942 votes while Hossain got 70,877 votes. Another chairman aspirant, AL’s rebel candidate Meshkoyara Habib got 13,952 votes. BNP and its allies had boycotted the Jan 5 parliamentary polls, but they are contesting the UZ polls. AL President Sheikh Hasina had lost to Nur Mohammad Mandal in 2001 parliamentary polls. He was a Jatiya Party leader then. Hasina, however, won in the 2008 general elections. Mandal, by then had changed his party and contested in BNP ticket. After the AL won a landslide in the 10th parliamentary elections, Hasina kept her own Gopalganj-3 constituency and vacated the Rangpur-6 (Pirganj), the home of the Prime Minister’s in-laws. Later, Speaker of Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury was elected MP from Rangpur-6, according to bdnews24.com.