Dr. Shahadat Hossain was sworn in as the Mayor of Chattogram City Corporation (CCC).

The swearing-in ceremony was held today (November 3) in the conference hall of the Dhaka Local Government Division, said Aziz Ahmed, the public relations officer of the city corporation.

He said the oath was officiated by AF Hasan Arif, adviser to the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives.

On October 1, a Chattogram court declared Shahadat Hossain the elected mayor of the Chattogram City Corporation after he filed a suit seeking annulment of the election results for “vote manipulation”.

The Election Tribunal Court and Joint District and Sessions Judge Mohammad Khairul Amin also directed the Election Commission to publish a bulletin within 10 days.

Eight days after the decision, on October 8, the Electoral Commission (EC) declared Shahadat the mayor of the CCC.

On 17 October, the LGRD ministry issued a revised notification excluding Chattogram from the notification for removal of municipal corporation mayors that was initially issued on 19 August.

On 24 February 2021, Shahadat filed a suit against the Election Commission and nine others, which centered the Chattogram City Corporation elections.

In the lawsuit, he made allegations of electoral fraud and sought to annul the results.

The accused in the case include recently ousted Chattogram mayor M Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, regional election officer, secretary to the election commissioner and chief election commissioner, among others.

The case documents indicated that Chattogram City Corporation officials started “coordinating” with Rezaul Karim immediately after the “boat” symbol was allotted.

“This suggests that election day was merely a formality. For this reason, a tally of votes has not yet been provided. No printed copies of the MEV have been distributed from any polling station,” the document said.

“By the afternoon of the election day, only 4-6% of the votes had been cast. However, the election results showed that 22% of the votes had been cast,” he added.

According to official election results, “boat” candidate Rezaul Karim Chowdhury won with 369,248 votes in the election on 27 January 2021.

His closest competitor, BNP mayoral candidate Shahadat Hossain, got 52,489 votes under the “hour beam” symbol.