Bangladesh Polls: Hasina gets landslide victory

Dhaka, Dec 30: In the historical Parliamentary elections of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina of Awami League has won landslide victory with more than 75 per cent seats.

Commission spokesman S M Asaduzzaman said that votes in 295 of the 299 seats had been counted, and Sheikh Hasina's Awani League had won 229.

"She has a clear majority to govern without any other party," Asaduzzaman said. Turnout of voters was high in the Monday's election. This ended the two years of army-backed regime rule in the country.

In the country's first election in seven years, Sheikh Hasina crushed her bitter rival Khaleda Zia.
"Our leader has called for change and the people have responded to her call," party spokesman Nuh Alam Lenin said after Monday's Dec 29 elections.

"They have given a thumping verdict against corruption and criminalisation of the past regime, " he added. Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which won the last election in 2001 by a huge margin, appeared to have won less than 10 percent of the vote and was quick to raise the issue of electoral fraud.

"There have been a lot of irregularities," BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed said. "Our supporters have been kept from voting, and our polling agents and officials have been barred from performing their duties." Sheikh Hasina and Zia, known as the battling begums, have ruled Bangladesh alternately since 1991, and their bitter personal rivalry has been blamed for paralysing political life in the country.

It can be recaleed that Sheikh Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led Bangladesh in its liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971 and was assassinated in a 1975 military coup.

OneIndia News (With inputs from Agencies)