High Court Orders Preservation of Ballots for 4 Constituencies Over Fraud Claims
On Monday, March 2, 2026, an election tribunal led by Justice Md. Zakir Hossain passed the order after four candidates from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) filed petitions challenging the outcomes of the February 12 general elections.
The four candidates who moved the court are:
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Sohel Hossain Kaikobad (Kurigram-2)
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Saiful Islam (Rangpur-6)
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Emdadul Haque Bharosa (Rangpur-4)
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Major General (Retd.) Md. Sharif Uddin (Rajshahi-1)
The petitioners filed their cases under Section 49 of the Representation of the People Order (RPO), which allows candidates to seek legal redress for electoral irregularities. Notably, in Rajshahi-1, BNP’s Sharif Uddin lost by a narrow margin of just 774 votes to Jamaat-e-Islami's Professor Mujibur Rahman, leading to immediate claims of counting manipulation. Similarly, Emdadul Haque Bharosa of Rangpur-4 had previously made emotional appeals to the media, alleging that "engineering" had deprived him of his victory.
This is part of a growing wave of legal challenges following the 13th National Parliamentary Election. The same tribunal has already ordered the preservation of electoral documents for seven other BNP seats and three Jamaat-e-Islami seats due to specific evidence of misconduct. With this latest ruling, all relevant voting materials for these four seats will now be kept under court supervision to prevent tampering, serving as primary evidence for the upcoming judicial hearings.
