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PremiumBangladesh Elections 2024 Live Updates: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won the re-election for a fifth term in the national election that were conducted on Sunday amidst the boycott by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former PM Khaleda Zia, who is currently in jail.
Sheikh Hasina's party Awami League has won a fourth consecutive term in the 12th parliamentary election, marking the second lowest voter turnout since the reinstatement of democracy in 1991, according to the Daily Star.
Polls will stay open until 5:00 pm with results expected after midnight, but Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed's opponents have called a weekend general strike and urged the public not to vote.
Some voters said they had been threatened with the confiscation of government benefit cards needed to access welfare payments if they refused to cast ballots for the ruling Awami League. "They said they would seize it from me if I don't vote," Lal Mia, 64, told AFP in the central district of Faridpur. "They said since the government feeds us, we have to vote for them."
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other parties staged months of protests last year demanding Hasina step down ahead of the vote.
Around 25,000 opposition cadres including the BNP's entire local leadership were arrested in the ensuing crackdown, the party says. The government puts the figure at 11,000.
Scattered protests continued in the days ahead of the election, including a few hundred opposition supporters who marched through central Dhaka on Friday -- a shadow of the hundreds of thousands seen at rallies last year.
The election commission said around 175,000 police officers and more than 515,000 members of the Ansar reserve force had been deployed to keep order during the vote. (AFP)
Bangladesh began voting Sunday in an election guaranteed to give Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina her fifth term in office, after a boycott by opposition parties whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests.
Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.
Hasina's party faces almost no effective rivals in the seats it is contesting but has avoided fielding candidates in a few seats, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution. (AFP)
Voting has begun in Bangladesh for the 12th general elections on Sunday, January 6. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed is expected to secure another term amid boycott calls by the main opposition party, BNP.
Bangladesh Elections 2024 Live Updates: For the Bangladesh assembly elections, more than 42,000 polling stations are set for Sunday. A total of 119.6 million registered voters are eligible to cast their votes, as reported by the country's Election Commission.
Women make up almost half of the nearly 120 million eligible voters, while first-time voters number about 15 million.
Bangladesh Elections 2024 Live Updates: Amid rising tensions in the nation ahead of general assembly elections, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of Bangladesh, Kazi Habibul Awal warned of cancelling the election if the Election Commission finds any irregularities in the Sunday's election, reported Dhaka Tribune.
He made it clear that vote rigging, ballot snatching, monetary transactions and possible show of power in favour of any candidate or candidates will not be allowed during the voting process.
Bangladesh Elections 2024 Live Updates: The Bangladesh Election Commission's election application, "Smart Election Management BD" crashed a day ahead of general elections scheduled to take place on January 7.
The Tk21 crore app, launched by the Election Commission for voters to find election-related details, including polling centre locations, stopped working a day before the polling date.
Bangladesh Elections 2024 Live Updates: Ahead of the general assembly elections, at least 14 polling centres and two schools in 10 districts of Bangladesh were set on fire between Friday evening and early Saturday, reported PTI referring to Dhaka Tribune report.
Earlier on Saturday, miscreants burned down a polling centre in lalmonirhat's Hatibandha upazila. At night, the centre, Sheikh Sundar Masterpara Primary School, was set on fire.
Bangladesh Elections 2024 Live Updates: Voting for Bangladesh's general assembly elections will begin on Sunday. Ahead of the elections, multiple cases of violence have been reported from across the country.
