On the seventh day of appeal hearings at the Election Commission (EC) against returning officers’ decisions on nomination scrutiny for the 13th parliamentary election, a further 18 candidates regained their candidacy.
The hearings, which began at 3:00pm on Friday, took up a total of 43 appeals. Of these, 17 were rejected, while four were kept pending for verdicts.
The full commission conducted the hearings at the Election Commission Building auditorium (Basement-2) in Agargaon, Dhaka, with Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin presiding.
With this, the past seven days of hearings have cleared the way for a total of 343 candidates to contest the national election scheduled for 12 February.
On Friday, 43 appeals were placed before the Election Appeal Tribunal. After the hearings, the commission approved 18 appeals filed against the rejection of nomination papers and rejected 17 appeals on the same issue.
In addition, the commission rejected four appeals filed against the acceptance of nomination papers. Due to complexities in the cases, four appeals were kept pending for verdicts.
According to the commission’s announced schedule, hearings on appeals numbered 511 to 610 will be held on Saturday, 17 January, from 10:00am to 5:00pm.
On the final day, 18 January, appeals numbered 611 to 645, along with the remaining pending appeals, will be disposed of, bringing the process to an end.
A total of 645 appeals were filed with the Election Commission against decisions to reject or accept nomination papers for the upcoming election.
