<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Polling of the third Rangpur City Corporation (RpCC) Elections- 2022 started at 8:30 am today peacefully amid festive atmosphere with spontaneous participation of enthusiastic voters.&nbsp;</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Polling will continue till 4:30 pm uninterruptedly and counting of votes will start subsequently at District Shilpokola Academy auditorium in the city.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hundreds of voters, including male, female and youths, have stood in queues in the polling centres since this morning amid foggy and cooler weather and the number of waiting voters in queues started increasing since 9 am.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mayoral candidates Hosne Ara Lutfa Dalia of Awami League (Boat) casted her vote at Lions School and College polling centre and Md. Mostafizar Rahman of Jatiya Party (Plough) casted his vote at Alamnagar Government Primary School polling centre this morning.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After casting her vote, Hosne Ara Lutfa Dalia, a former Awami League lawmaker and lawyer by profession, expressed her 100 percent confidence that voters would not make any more mistakes and make the symbol Boat winner for planned development of Rangpur city and its people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Voters are casting their votes easily using EVMs at all polling centres although some people are trying to give a wrong message about EVMs," she added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Immediate past mayor Md. Mostafizar Rahman also expressed his confidence of winning the mayoral post again with a huge margin of votes if the polling was held peacefully in a transparent, free and fair manner.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Talking to reporters after visiting a number of polling centres, Returning Officer (RO) for RpCC Elections-2022 Md. Abdul Baten said ample steps have been taken for holding the RpCC polls in a free, fair and transparent manner.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hundreds of voters are casting votes in festive moods using electronic voting machines (EVMs) at all 229 polling centres.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Every polling station is covered by CCTV cameras and the RpCC-2022 elections are being monitored from both Dhaka and Rangpur with CCTV cameras. If any problem is noticed, steps will be taken immediately,” the RO added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fifteen security forces including five armed personnel are patrolling at each of the 133 normal polling centres while 16 security personnel with six armed personnel have been deployed at each of the other 86 important polling centres.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Election officials said a total of 260 candidates, including nine for mayoral, 183 for 33 general councilors’ and 68 for 11 reserved female councilors’ posts, are contesting in the third RpCC Elections-2022.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A total of 4,276 election officials, including 229 presiding officers, 1,349 assistant presiding officers and 2,698 polling officers are engaged in conducting the RpCC polls.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An Adequate number of members of police, Ansar-VDP, APBN, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has been deployed for holding the RpCC-2022 polls peacefully amid tight security blankets.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thirty-three roving teams, 11 striking force teams and six reserved striking force teams comprising Police, APBN and Battalion Ansar and VDP, 17 teams of RAB and 11 more teams of BGB are on duty during the RpCC polls.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In addition, plain cloth security personnel of RAB, police and intelligence are on duty to ensure maximum degree of security for holding RpCC polls peacefully.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Besides, 33 Executive Magistrates are leading 33 mobile courts and 16 Judicial Magistrates leading 16 summary courts to conduct trials for violation of election rules and will continue to work till December 29 next.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As many as 4,26,470 voters, including 2,12,302 males, 2,14,167 females and a transgender voter, will apply their voting rights in the RpCC Elections-2022. BSS</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>