What answer does the Election Commission have?

In the affidavit submitted during the 2018 11th Jatiya Sangsad election, he had mentioned that he and his wife owned agricultural and non-agricultural land worth Tk 4,587,761. The price of three houses and one building in Barishal and Rajapur was reported to be Tk 17,870,000. The value of a farm in Dhaka was shown to be Tk 4,824,508. However, this time he made no mention of any movable property, although he reported income from rental of houses and apartments as 1,945,277 taka.

The manual for the conduct of the 12th Jatiya Sangsad elections recently published by the Election Commission states, “3. Providing incorrect information in the affidavit: As per any Representation of the People Order, 1972, if a candidate does not provide information in the submitted affidavit or provides incorrect information… then the Returning Officer may, on his own initiative, or… Any person may, on the basis of objection raised by him, make a summary inquiry and cancel any nomination paper. In other words, Barrister Umar’s nomination papers would have been canceled due to concealment of information regarding the case currently registered against him.

But despite hiding the information, the returning officer did not cancel the nomination papers of Shahjahan Umar. On the contrary, new arguments were used to legitimize it. Justifying his argument, the returning officer said, “Being accused in a case and being a suspect are different things. According to the information sought by the Election Commission, the nomination papers are being considered as he is not an accused in this case.

However, whatever be the outcome of the judicial proceedings, it was mandatory for him to include in his affidavit the case against Barrister Shahjahan Umar under which he was arrested and then released on bail. In other words, instead of canceling the nomination papers of Barrister Shahjahan Omar, the Returning Officer started an irrelevant explanation to protect him by suppressing the information.

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