Kochi: Counting of votes is on in Bangladesh where over 2,000 candidates are contesting for 350 seats in parliament, BBC reported.
Election was necessitated after student-led protests ousted Premier Sheikh Hasina of
Awami League in 2024.
After 15 years in power Hasina fled after a brutal security crackdown against protesters in which hundreds of protesters were killed.
Hasina’s Awami League is not in the fray as it has been banned. Centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is taking on a coalition led by the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami, which joined forces with a party born out of the student uprising.
Results are expected on Friday.
Hasina is in exile in India from where she’s rejected the charges against her and has questioned the legitimacy of the election.
The ban on her Awami League contesting the polls casts a shadow over whether this election can be described as free and fair. Over 120 million people were eligible to vote.
Speaking after voting, Bangladesh’s interim leader – the Nobel Peace Price laureate Muhammad Yunus – said the country had “ended the nightmare and begun a new dream”.
Turnout had reached 49% by 2 pm local time.
Photo: X
