Election 2008

Biharis may play decisive role in Nilphamari-4

21 December 2008, 18:00 PM

Our Correspondent, Nilphamari

Urdu speaking people of the railway city of Saidpur, commonly known as 'Biharis,' can play a decisive role in the upcoming election in Nilphamari-4 constituency comprising Saidpur and part of Kishoreganj upazila. As they constitute about 30 percent voters, they can make a different result from rest of the country . In the constituency, there is no common candidate of grand alliance. The parliamentary seat has been kept open for both the candidates of Awami League (AL) and Jatiya Party (JP). A total of five candidates are contesting in the constituency. It is presumed the main contest will be among three candidates. They are AL's Col (retd) Maruf Saqlain, BNP's Amzad Hossain Sarkar (4-party Alliance) and JP's Md Sawkat Chowdhury. Although the total number of voters in the constituency is 2,46,492 but in Saidpur municipality alone there are 70,000 voters. Most of them are Biharis most of whom migrated from India after partition of the sub-continent in 1947. During our liberation war most of them supported Pakistan. After independence of Bangladesh, many of them declared themselves as Pakistani citizen and went back to Pakistan. Rest of them are still living in 21 refugee camps in Saidpur as stranded Pakistanis. At that time a good number of Biharis accepted Bangladesh as their own land and became Bangladeshi citizens. They and their descendents are now voters. As a minority community, they are united JP chairman H M Ershad is well known to them as he was commander of Saidpur Cantonment in mid-1971. Leading personalities of the Urdu speaking community established good relationship with him. On the other hand, AL candidate Col (Retd) Maruf Saqlain was also commander of Saidpur cantonment a few years ago just before his retirement from army. Then he stood beside local people in time of flood and disaster. He is also liked by many people as an honest and a straight forward person. Former BNP lawmaker Amzad Hossain Sarkar was elected here in 2001 election. Again he became a candidate of 4- party alliance. While allotting houses of government's Uttara Housing project at Dhelapeer here, he helped Biharis get most of the houses. Many Biharis were given important posts in the BNP committees here. Earlier, it was found that whoever won in Saidpur municipality having majority Bihari voters were able to become a lawmaker.