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N’ganj City Polls

AL fails to back either candidate

Star Report
Neither Shamim Osman nor Selina Hayat Ivy — the two may-oral aspirants from Awami League in the Narayanganj City Corporation polls — withdrew
candidacy on the last day yesterday despite Prime Minister and party chief Sheikh Kasina's efforts to persuade one of them to stand down.
This means Shamim, a former AL lawmaker, and Ivy, vice-president of Narayanganj city unit AL, will both
contest the October 30 election. The returning officer will allocate polls symbols today.
A number of senior AL leaders had earlier said either of the two would pull out on the last date for withdrawal.
The AL high command, including party President Sheikh Hasina, held a series of meetings with Shamim and Ivy to cajole one of the two into quitting. Hasina herself sat thrice with the two separately.
On Sunday, the party at a meeting between Hasina and some senior leaders at Gono Bhaban “unofficially decided” to back Ivy in the polls. As a "reward” for pulling out, meeting sources had told The Daily Star, Shamim would be offered posts in the party and in the government.
The move failed as Shamim, who now has no party post, reportedly refused to accept those “rewards”.
Asked about the next
course of action, AL Presidium Member Obaidul Quader said the party will soon decide on whom to give support.
"Both Shamim andlvyare good candidates. As none of them withdrew, we'll decide in a day or two as to who will get party backing," he said yesterday.
However, Narayanganj lawmaker Abdullah-Al-Kaisar told The Daily Star on Tuesday night after a meeting with Sheikh Hasina that if Shamim and Ivy fail to reach an agreement, they will both be free to run in the election. “In that case, the party would neither support nor put pressure on either to step aside," he said.
Meanwhile, both Shamim and Ivy conducted campaigns on alimited scale in the newly-formed city corporation yesterday with supporters of both the camps expecting to eventually win the party support.
The main opposition BNP-affiliated candidate Taimur Alam Khandoker
also held door-to-door campaigns.
Asked about party backing, Ivy said, “My party never asked me to pull out. But I'm still facing pressure from different quarters to quit."
She said she would not yield to force.
Shamim, on the other hand, claimed that the party has already backed him.
Earlier in the morning, supporters of Shamim and Ivy gathered in front of the returning officer's office, each camp hoping the candidate of the other camp to step down.
TWo other mayoral hopefuls — SM Akram, convener of the district AL and Habibullah Kanchpuri, ousted president of Awami Olama League — withdrew their candidatures. Seventeen ward councillor hopefuls also pulled out.
In another development, television programmes of local channels remained off-air from around 5:30pm to 6:45pm yesterday.
Abdul Karim Babu, who
controls the cable service in the town, said it happened due to technical glitches.
Locals, however, said that Babu is a close aide to Jatiya Party MP Nasim Osman, brother of Shamim Osman, and that he deliberately took the programmes off-air, as the local channels were running news that Ivy is still in the race.
Babu himself is a councillor hopeful in the October 30 polls.