After daylong peaceful voting in the Cumilla City Corporation (CCC) election, Awami League’s mayor candidate Arfanul Haque Rifat won a neck and neck, and fairly tensed, race against independent mayor aspirant Monirul Haque Sakku on Wednesday.

Following scuffles and disruption caused by Rifat’s supporters that led to temporary suspension in result announcement at the District Shilpakala Academy premises, Returning Officer Shahedunnabi Chowdhury announced the final results around 9:30pm.
Nagad

According to him, Rifat (boat) won by bagging 50,310 and while Sakku got 49,967 votes. Their other contender, Nizam Uddin Kaiser (horse) had bagged 29,099 votes.

Rifat winning the polls means the ruling party will have its candidate as the city’s mayor for the first time since the corporation’s inception a decade ago.

Sakku has been the CCC mayor since the first election in 2012. He is vying for the mayor post this time around as an independent candidate after BNP ousted him in last month for going against party discipline. Kaiser was also ousted by BNP.

In his immediate reaction, while talking to reporters at the control room, an angry Sakku expressed his displeasure over the final outcome after leading the vote counting until the result announcements of all but four polling centres.

According to the Returning Officer’s Office, there were a total of 2,29,920 voters in the city. Of them, 1,17,092 were women, 1,12,826 were men and two others were transgender voters.

Voting took place in 640 polling stations of 105 centres between 8am and 4pm.

In the election, there were five candidates for the post of mayor, 106 for the post of general councillor and 36 for the post of reserved women councillor.

Voting in 27 CCC wards had ended without reports of any major violence.