Natore BCL leader buys all Prothom Alo copies

Sayeed Muhammad of DOT
In a bizarre turn of events, a Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) leader of the Natore city unit has bought all the copies of Prothom Alo. The development deprived regular readers of the Bangla daily in the district of their subscribed copy yesterday, the Bangla daily reports.
The daily yesterday also published three stories on election titled ‘MP Shafiqul says, those who will vote for boat, will go to polling centres’, ‘Mass attacks to bar rally’ and ‘BNP leaders under lock and key, freed after half an hour’.
The city unit Chhatra League, the student of wing of ruling Awami League, the hawkers were told not to circulate yesterday’s issue of Prothom Alo, the daily reports quoting the newspaper’s sales agents in Natore.
After some time, the president of the AL municipality unit bought all the copies from the sales agents at Kanaikhai Old Bus Stand of the town, and the later that they will be paid for the copies later.
The Daily Star on December 24 also published a report titled ‘Allow only ‘boat voters’ at centres’ on a video footage showing Natore-2 Awami League candidate and lawmaker Shafiqul Islam Shimul addressing an event at Chhatni village on December 17.
Shimul said no one other than the voters of the “boat” symbol would go to the polling centres on December 30 and instructed his party to ensure victory of the boat symbol by only letting boat voters into the vote centres.
“Those who will vote for boat can go to voting centres. Those who won’t cannot go to voting centres. It is as simple as that,” Shimul was seen as saying in the video footage.
In blatant violation of the electoral code of conduct, Shimul was also heard threatening BNP men of “tougher actions against them” and asking them to work for the boat symbol to save their lives.