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AL's Afroz wins Barisal by-polls

Our Correspondent, Bansai
Ruling Awami League-nominated candidate Jebunnesa Afroz won the by-election to B a r i s a 1 - 5 constituency yesterday,
which raised allegations of low turnout and vote rigging.
She bagged 1,83,629 votes while her rival Bangladesh Nationalist Front (BNF)-nominated Saiful Islam Liton got 6,136 votes.
Election officials claimed that 55 percent of the voters had exercised their franchise but according to local journalists and polls observers, the actual turnout was very low.
Huge fake votes were cast, they said.
The Daily Star correspondent saw a handful of voters during his visit to at least 15 polling stations.
Whenever journalists went to a centre, law enforcers alerted supporters and polling agents of the AL candidate by blowing whistles. Some people immediately lined up purporting to be voters before the media.
Only 5-10 percent voters cast their ballots, said Enayet Hossain Chowdhury, secretary of the Fair Election Monitoring Alliance and former secretary of Barisal Nagorik Parishad.
Vote rigging took place as agents of BNF candidate Saiful were absent from the polling stations and so no one was there to challenge casting of fake votes, he said.
The correspondent went to cast his
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vote at Sher-e-Bangla Night School centre at 2:00pm when he was told that his ballot had already been cast.
Asked about the matter, the presiding officer, Samir Ranjan Biswas, said no one had challenged fake voting.
Returning Officer of the polls centre Shahidul Alam said he had not received any allegation of vote rigging.
The parliamentary seat of the constituency fell vacant after the death of AL lawmaker and Barisal city AL president Shawkat Hossain Hiron on April 9.
His widow Jebunnesa Afroj and BNF candidate Saiful contested the seat.
However, no polling agents of Saiful were seen at the centres. He himself has been remainingout of sight in Barisal for the last five days.