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2,500 candidates apply to contest Bangladesh election
Nearly 2,500 candidates have submitted nominations to contest parliamentary elections in Bangladesh on December 29, poll officials said on Monday.
- Agencies
- Published: 11:32 December 1, 2008
Dhaka: Nearly 2,500 candidates have submitted nominations to contest parliamentary elections in Bangladesh on December 29, poll officials said on Monday.
The election for the 300-seat parliament will cap nearly two years of emergency rule which followed widespread political violence in the impoverished south Asian country.
Most of the nominations came from the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by former prime ministers Shaikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, respectively.
The exact number of contestants will not be known until applications have been scrutinised, officials told reporters, a day after the deadline for submitting nominations expired.
Many political stalwarts, mostly from the BNP, were barred from filing nominations because of convictions for corruption.
They were arrested in a crackdown on corruption by the army-backed interim government and tried by special courts operating under emergency rules.
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