Hossen Sohel of DOT
Patuakhali-3 BNP candidate Golam Maula Rony and 22 others have won their petition to the Election Commission, to review their nomination applications for the parliamentary polls, reports bdnews24.com.
As a result, the nominees, who had initially been rejected, will be able to contest the coming polls.
The decision was taken on Thursday, the first day of appeal hearings for nominees who had their applications rejected.
The hearing began at 10am on the eleventh floor of the EC’s headquarters. Of the 534 appeal petitions, a total of 160 have been settled on the first day.
Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda and election commissioners Mahbub Talukdar, Rafiqul Islam, Kabita Khanam and Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury sat on the temporary board formed to consider the reviews.
Golam Maula Rony, a former Awami League leader, had his application as the BNP’s candidate rejected on Dec 2 by the Patuakhali returning officer due to ‘no signature on the affidavit’.
Rony, who had been elected as an Awami League candidate in 2008, said the absence of his signature was a ‘simple mistake’ and claimed that no nomination had ever been dismissed for such a reason.
Rony’s lawyer, BNP leader Mahbub Uddin Khokon, told the media after Thursday’s hearing that Rony will be allowed to sign his affidavit.
Jamalpur-4 BNP pick Faridul Kabir Talukdar’s nomination has also been declared valid. The returning officer had rejected his application on the grounds that the upazila chairman’s resignation had not been accepted.
Bogura-7 BNP pick Morshed Milton, who had been the alternate nominee to party chief Khaleda Zia, has also been approved for the polls on review. His nomination had initially been rejected for the same reason as Talukdar.