Awami League (AL) emerged as a huge power in Chittagong, known as the safe vote bank of BNP for long, with all the heavyweight BNP candidates losing on Monday's historic general election.
With all its stalwarts lost in different constituencies by a huge margin of votes, both senior and root-level leaders of BNP are now busy in finding out the reasons contributed to the party's election debacle.
All the leaders, including Joint Secretary General and former fisheries minister Abdullah AL Noman, ex-commerce minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury (one out of two), ex-whip Syed Wahidul Alam, ex-lawmaker Sarwar Jamal Nizam and ex-lawmaker Gazi Md Shahjahan Jewel, lost their seats where they were elected for several times.
AL with its landslide victory managed to stretch its political dominance in many areas like Chittagong city and different upazilas in the district, including Boalkhali, Patiya, Rangunia and Hathazari sweeping out the BNP walls. It also regained its power at Mirersarai, Sitakunda and Anwara upazilas they lost in 2001 elections.
Amir Khasru, who was elected from the city's Bandar constituency in 1996 and in 2001 with a huge vote margin, was defeated by AL candidate MA Latif by 22,645 votes.
Khasru told The Daily Star yesterday that they will analyse all the aspects regarding his losing in the election.
He convened a meeting to take opinion of cross-section of people and root-level leaders on the disastrous result.
Abdullah Al Noman, however, blamed invisible election engineering for the debacle of BNP in the elections.
Noman alleged that lots of voters could not cast their votes as their 'voter' serial numbers according to the list provided by the EC to the candidates differed the list with photos with in the polling officers.
Many root-level leaders of BNP and its front organisations believe that December 29 election was much free and fair and its result was nothing but a reflection of mass opinion.
Former law affairs secretary of JCD Chittagong city unit Mohammad Monoar said apart from some nominal allegations the result was the true reflection of public opinion.
Monoar, who also worked as a polling agent of BNP candidate Shamsul Alam, said, “Senior leaders are now placing some allegations of election engineering but I didn't see any sort of irregularities at any of the booths.”
Khaled, a BNP supporter, said during casting their votes, people considered the issues like corruption, crime and rise of militancy during its tenure.
General Secretary of BNP North District unit Prof Yunus Chowdhury said he did not witness any major irregularities in the elections except some mistakes in the voter list.