Dhaka: The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia on Tuesday withdrew from crucial mayoral elections in Chittagong — the country’s second-largest city.

The main opposition party said the polls were being rigged by ruling Awami League activists as voting was underway.

“I am announcing that we are withdrawing from the polls, we are rejecting the elections as it appeared farcical,” senior BNP leader Moudud Ahmad told a news briefing.

He was accompanied by BNP mayoral candidate for North Dhaka City Corporation Tabith Awwal and Afroza Abbas, wife of Mirza Abbas, their imprisoned candidate in South Dhaka City Corporation.

Ahmad said most of their polling agents were removed from polling centres while the voters were being allowed to cast ballots only after confirming their affiliation for the ruling party.

“We took part in the election with the hope that the election will be free and fair. But the government has made the elections meaningless,” BNP committee member he said.

The BNP withdrawal came an hour after their candidate in Chittagong and incumbent mayor of the port city, Manjur Alam announced that he was boycotting the elections as it was being manipulated by the ruling party activists.

“My polling agents have been ousted from different centres and I have no wish to take part in election anymore. I’m quitting politics forever,” he told a press conference in Chittagong as polling was underway.

Alam, who is in his mid 70s, said from now he would concentrate in social services alone.

Addressing the press briefing, BNP leader Amir Khasru Mahmoud Chowdhury alleged that rigging was so rife that “we don’t need to wait to see the results.”

Bangladesh authorities earlier mobilised some 80,000 members of law enforcement agencies and called out paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) to ensure peaceful voting with election officials saying all measures were taken to hold peaceful and credible elections.

The BNP move came as media reports and witnesses said ruling Awami League activists threw out agents of opposition candidates, prompting election commission to postpone polling at several centres in the capital.

The Awami League said the BNP decision was part of a “pre-planned” drama with its joint general secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif saying they “boycotted the polls as they understood that they are going to lose the race”.

“The BNP did it as they are looking for a new issue to affect the ongoing peaceful situation in the country and they don’t want peace,” Hanif said.

Bangladesh’s troubled politics, which saw massive violence earlier this year, took a new turn as the BNP last month decided to return to politics of the ballot as their nearly three months of violent anti-government campaign gradually subsided.

BNP boycotted the January 5, 2014 national elections for what it said was the lack of a “level playing field” under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government.

Last month they decided to take part in the mayoral polls in the two major cities as part of a revised political strategy, which was widely welcomed by civil society and the foreign diplomats.

“With the withdrawal of all three BNP backed mayoral candidates from the Dhaka city north, Dhaka city south and Chittagong city corporation elections, the national politics is back to square one,” the Daily Star in an opinion column wrote in its online version. The BNP, it said, “had boycotted last year’s national election and had been largely taking strategically wrong steps ever since,” and the party “had no other option at this point”.