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City hotels feel the polls heat

Shariful Islam and Shaheen mollah
Police have stepped up monitoring of city hotels and messes as they are strictly checking the identities of guests and boarders ahead of Sunday's national election.
The number of guests and boarders came down due to the move which was launched early this month, said staffers of some hotels and messes in Mirpur, Farmgate and East Tejturibazar areas.
Besides, police were also visiting flats and homes in Mirpur area to check the identities of the dwellers, said locals.
Law enforcers asked landlords to submit tenant information forms to them soon after filling those out.
Police, however, didn't give any specific reason for such a move.
Talking to The Daily Star on Friday, a staff of Royal Grand Hotel in East Tejturibazar said, "We have been seeing a sharp drop in the number of guests since the beginning of this month.”
Almost all the 60 rooms of the five-storey hotel used to be occupied by guests around the year. But it was having fewer guests since for over two weeks as it refused many who failed to produce proper documents, particularly the national identity (NID) card.
"Since early this month, the number of occupied rooms has come down to between 30 and 35 daily," said the staff on condition of anonymity.
The hotel staffers and mess managers said as per recent instructions by police, they didn't rent out any room to people without NID cards and other relevant documents.
"Earlier, police were not so strict about the identities of people. So, we used to rent out rooms to customers having no NID cards," said the manager of another hotel.He said policemen sat at the reception of hotels, but they didn't raid rooms.
To avoid any trouble, many hoteliers made their inoperative CCTV cameras operative, said another hotel manager. "We are now fully complying with the police instructions."
A staff of Hotel Green Palace International on Green Road made a similar observation.
Visiting at least four messes in Rajabazar, Green Road and West Karwan Bazar areas, this newspaper found that many boarders were leaving the messes ahead of the election.
One of them is Chowdhury Mess on Green Road which accommodates service holders, businessmen and some students. It has 72 rooms, each having a capacity for five people.
"All the rooms of our mess used to remain occupied around the year. We had to turn down requests of borders for seats," said Manager Ali Hossain. "Now we have five rooms empty. Some boarders in several other rooms have left."
He said police visited the mess and searched some rooms since early this month.
A number of Mirpur residents said police recently visited their homes and asked them to submit tenant information forms.
Cops entered flats and homes and wanted to know whether any of the tenants' relatives were staying there, said a tenant of a house in Mirpur Section-10.
Asked about the matter, Masudur Rahman, deputy commissioner (media) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said they took different measures ahead of the general election so that no criminal group could commit an offence.
"Drives are underway in the city to arrest criminals and stop criminal activities,” he told The Daily Star.