The New Nation - Internet Edition

Our Correspondent, Barisal

Advocate Majibor Rahman Sarwar, BNP -led 4 party alliance candidate declared elected as the lawmaker for the Barisal-5 constituency in the election held on Monday, defeating AL-led 14 party candidate Col. (retd.) Zahid Faruk Shamim by a margin of 6,301 votes.

The media men and the political activists witnessed more dramatic changes of position of Sarwar who alleged 'election engineering' attempts of the result at 11:00 pm on Monday night and later accepted it at 1:10 am on early Tuesday.

Deputy commissioner and returning officer of Barisal suspended announcing the result since 8:30 pm Monday night from his control room which created rumor among the people and media men as the result of all centers were already collected by different sources including the Barisal Sadar Upazila Nirbahi Office.

However returning officer sat in a meeting with high civil and defence officials without accepting and declaring any result.

In the meantime allegation of attempts of election engineering was made by Sarwar in a press conference held at the election control room at 11:00 pm.

Sarwar himself went to the UNO office and collected the copy of the result from UNO at 11:30 pm.

When the media men contacted with the returning officer in this connection, he said that he is re-counting the result sheets of the all vote centers.

At last at 1:00 am early Tuesday night, after a long break of about 5 hours Mushfiq Ahmed Shamim, returning officer, returned to control room declared the result of Barisal-5 constituency.

According to his declared result Majibor Rahman Sarwar received 1, 05,694 votes out of 2, 38,147 votes caste in this constituency. His nearest rival AL candidate Col. (retd.) Zahid Faruk Shamim, received 99,393 votes and another rival Mufti Faizul Karim of Islami Andolon received 27,393 and more 1496 were cast as 'No' votes.

After declaring the result Sarwar thanked the role of media people for foiling ' election engineering' attempt and said that yet he was not satisfied with winning with a minimum margin of only 6301 votes which was too less than his previous margin of 56,027 in last election of 2001.