BNP's Mirza Faisal Amin Wins Thakurgaon-1 By-Election by a Huge Margin, Defeating Jamaat Candidate

Mirza Faisal Amin, the BNP-nominated candidate, has won by a huge margin in the by-election to the Thakurgaon-1 seat, which fell vacant after Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir resigned from the Jatiya Sangsad. He received 227,917 votes.

His nearest rival, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami candidate Delawar Hossain, received 96,513 votes. Thakurgaon district election officer and returning officer Mohammad Kamrul Islam announced the result at 9:45pm on Thursday (29 October). The district returning officer later formally declared Mirza Faisal Amin the unofficial winner.

Among the other candidates in the declared result, Islami Andolan Bangladesh's Dr Khademul Islam (hand fan) received 3,289 votes, Bangladesh Khelafat Andolan's Md Abdul Alim Nizami (banyan tree) received 836 votes, and Bangladesh Congress candidate Husain Muhammad Omar Faruk (green coconut) received 450 votes. According to district election commission information, a total of five candidates contested the seat.

The winner, Mirza Faisal Amin, is the younger brother of President Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir. He is also the president of the district BNP.

In an immediate reaction after winning, Mirza Faisal Amin thanked people from all walks of life in Thakurgaon-1 at the district BNP office at 10:30pm. He said he expected everyone's full cooperation in the coming days to achieve the area's desired development and to maintain peace, discipline and harmony. He also said this victory was a victory of truth over lies, a victory of the common people, and a victory of BNP leaders and workers at all levels.

Earlier, voting ran on Thursday from 8am to 4pm. The election had a total of 185 polling centres and 989 polling booths.

The seat has a total of 516,138 voters. Among them, 257,475 are men, 258,659 are women and four are third-gender voters. More than 130,000 of the voters are Hindu.

A total of 334,330 votes were cast in the election. The number of valid votes was 329,005. The turnout was 64.81 percent. In addition, 5,325 votes were rejected due to various technical and procedural errors.

In the 13th national parliamentary election held on 12 February this year, then BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was elected member of parliament from Thakurgaon-1. Later, after he took office as the country's 23rd president, the Election Commission declared the Thakurgaon-1 seat vacant. Voting in that vacant seat was held on Thursday.

BNP candidate Mirza Faisal Amin contested the by-election with the sheaf of paddy symbol, and Jamaat-e-Islami candidate Delawar Hossain contested with the scales symbol.