Jony Mia (60) is a voter of the Dhaka Cotton Mill Adarsha High School polling centre in Dhaka-4 constituency. He had arrived at the centre to cast his vote at 9:45am, but as soon he entered, he learnt that his vote had already been cast.
Six agents from various candidates, including polling agents, had confirmed his presence (tick mark) and also issued a ballot paper.
Lodging a complaint, Jony Mia said, “I am 60 years old. I returned after 40 years abroad. Since coming back to the country in 2014, I have never been able to vote. This time, I came with great eagerness to cast my vote. As soon as I entered to vote, I heard that my vote had supposedly already been cast. But I haven’t voted at all.”
Expressing regret, he said, “I do business in Dhaka. Yesterday, I went to my village home in Bikrampur so my wife could vote. I came back from there very early today to vote. But as soon as I entered to vote, I found out that someone had already cast my vote.”
At this time, upon observing his complaint, it was seen that there was no indelible ink on his hand or nails. And there was no ink on his finger.
This centre is part of electoral area 177, Dhaka-4, centre no 53, with presiding officer Mohammad Anwar Hossain.
Regarding this complaint, he said, “We have verified this. All the polling agents identified his name, photo, and address and put a tick mark. There is nothing we can do now. The polling officers allowed the vote after verification. No objection was seen from them regarding this. As soon as we received this complaint and verified, we saw that all polling agents had put a tick mark. And a vote has been cast against that NID.”
Locals were seen expressing anger over Jony Mia’s incident. Haider Rahman, a local voter, said, “After many years, this vote was the vote we had been waiting. People are coming to the polling centres with great interest to vote. In the past years, we couldn’t even stay in the area, let alone vote. But this time, even after coming with great eagerness to vote, one voter could not cast his vote. This is unfortunate.”
