The document the BNP recently came up with to substantiate its claim of rigging and irregularities in the ninth parliamentary election is not accurate as it mentions an incorrect number of voters at the polling station concerned.
At a press briefing on Friday senior BNP leaders presented erroneous figures in the result sheet of Gahelapur High School poll centre in Raninagar upazila of Naogaon-6 constituency as their evidence of poll rigging.
The result sheet of the polling station shows that 3,845 votes were cast at the centre while 3,768 voters were entitled to cast their votes there. Casting of 77 more votes means voter turnout at the polling station was 102.04 percent.
The BNP has based its allegation of poll rigging, which it claims to have caused its debacle, on the result sheet of just one of the 35,158 polling centres.
The result sheets of all the poll centres were given to the election agents of the party candidates immediately after vote counting was complete but so far there have been no complaints about any other poll centre.
In reality, the total number of voters at the Gahelapur polling station was 4,091 according to the electoral roll, which is available on the Election Commission (EC) website www.ecs.gov.bd.
So, voter turnout there was about 93.98 percent while the average turnout at the 79 polling stations of the constituency was 92.82 percent.
The district election officer mistakenly provided the inaccurate number of voters in the gazette published by the EC at the end of last November.
Since its publication, the EC Secretariat has made frequent amendments to the gazette to correct around 300 such errors.
"It was a massive task where mistakes are not unusual. On receiving accurate information, we always amend the gazette providing the accurate number of voters at polling stations," Mihir Sarwar Morshed, deputy secretary to the EC Secretariat, told The Daily Star yesterday.
Echoing the view, EC Senior Assistant Secretary Farhad Ahmed Khan said, "We found similar errors in the gazettes of polling stations in previous polls."
The election officer of Naogaon district, however, did not send the EC Secretariat any letter to correct the mistake in the gazette.
EC Secretariat officials said despite the amendments, the gazette might still have mistakes with some more polling stations. "But it does not mean the election was rigged there. The mistake is nothing but a human error," a senior official said, adding that they are examining the election result sheets to find if there are more such unusual incidents.
"The Election Commission will clarify the reasons for such mistakes," he said.
Asked if the BNP has received any further documents of similar incidents, the party's Office Secretary Rizvi Ahmed yesterday replied in the negative and said, "We will inform the media if we get more."
Following the release of the document, EC Secretariat officials yesterday morning examined the electoral roll, result sheets and other documents of the Gahelapur High School polling station.
According to the gazette of polling stations and the electoral roll, voters of six electoral areas were entitled to cast their votes at the polling station.
Of the electoral areas of Barogachha union of Raninagar upazila, 295 voters were from Kachua, 1,094 from Gahelapur, 247 from Khasgar, 907 from Baria, 522 from Akna and 1,026 voters from Katrashain.
To prepare the list of polling stations for the ninth parliamentary election, the EC Secretariat had asked the district election officials to send lists of prospective polling stations with the number of voters. The election officer of Naogaon district sent the list and the EC Secretariat published those in the official gazette on November 23 last year.
But the election officer failed to correct the error in the number of voters for the Gahelapur High School polling station.
The candidate of the AL-led grand alliance, Israfil Alam, won the battle in the constituency obtaining 1,30,985 votes while contender of BNP-Jamaat-led four-party alliance Anwar Hossain Bulu bagged 86,990 votes.
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