Voting has started from 10 am this Saturday in the leadership election of BGMEA. 70 candidates are competing for 35 director posts in this election. They are divided into two constituencies, namely Sammilita Parishad and Forum.
In addition to Dhaka, BGMEA’s Chittagong office is also simultaneously voting for the 2024-26 term board of the organization. This time the total number of voters is 2 thousand 496. Among them 2 thousand 32 voters of Dhaka and 464 of Chittagong.
In this election, the panel leader or party leader of the combined council is SM Mannan. He is currently the Senior Vice President of BGMEA. And the panel leader of the forum is Faisal Samad. He is the former Vice President of BGMEA.
After investigation, it is known that before the start of voting in the morning, there was a murmur about standing of the candidates under the polling station. At that time, there was a clash between both the panels. Later the situation calmed down with the intervention of senior leaders of both the panels. In the beginning the voter turnout was low but later the voter turnout increased.
However, Election Board Chairman Jahangir Alamin could not tell how many votes were cast in the first few hours. In this regard, he told Prothom Alo around 12 noon that he will inform about the number of votes later.
Before that, Forum Panel Leader Faisal Samad told reporters, ‘Now the polling environment is good. We are 100% optimistic about winning if the voting continues like this. However, there are doubts about the counting of votes. If the Election Commission takes a strong stand, there will be a fair environment. We want the leader to be elected through voting.’
Samilit Parishad panel leader SM Mannan told Prothom Alo that the voting is taking place in a beautiful environment. There is no problem. Regarding Faisal Samad’s complaint about counting of votes, he said, “Then how (in what process) will the votes be counted?”
Most trade organizations in the country do not vote in leadership elections. However, BGMEA is one of the few organizations that vote. Sometimes, however, it is disrupted. In that case, the board of directors is formed through consensus. BGMEA Council was elected in 2013 by direct vote of members. Next time the combined council and forum agreed on two terms.