Dhaka: Though the party joined the election with a high hope to show its popularity and rejuvenate its leaders and activists, a massive defeat in Thursday’s Narayanganj City Corporation (NCC) polls stunned and surprised Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) high-ups and frustrated its rank and file.

Party senior leaders are still ‘clueless’ why it failed to prove its popularity in the local body polls.

Some leaders think fielding a ‘weak’ candidate and local leaders’ non-cooperation to him are the main reasons behind the poor show while some others attributed it to the party’s organisational weakness and intra-party conflicts and ruling party candidates’ huge popularity.

A leader close to party chairperson Khaleda Zia said she has asked party’s top leaders to find out the major reasons behind the poor results shortly and give her a report on it.

She also said she will take organisation action if any leader’s negative role in the polls is found.

The BNP chief has also entrusted some leaders with the responsibility to look into the issue. They will go to Narayanganj very soon and give a report to Khaleda after taking opinions of the local leaders and activists and those worked as polling agents.

Contacted, BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said they have started working to evaluate the polls results and find out the major reasons behind the BNP candidate’s debacle.

He said they will investigate whether there was any manipulation of election results or any tricks by the government.

Asked whether there was local BNP leaders’ non-cooperation to party candidate Sakhawat Hossain Khan, Fakhrul said they will also look into the matter. “If any leaders’ negative role is found as reason for the bad results, we’ll surely take stern actions in this regard.”

Party standing committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, who worked as convener of BNP’s NCC lection coordination team, said the election results were much unexpected to them. “There’s success and defeat in polls. But the difference of votes is huge which has made us surprised. We’ll now talk to our polling agents and others involved with party’s electioneering to know the reasons behind it,” he added.

He said they will also unearth whether through an investigation that whether there was any foul play by local leaders in the polls.

BNP vice chairman Shamsuzzaman Dudu said though the election was apparently fair, they fear that the results might have manipulated during vote counting. “The election results stunned us as we couldn’t imagine such bad results.”

According to a local BNP leader, intra-party conflict and local leaders’ non-cooperation caused the poor results in the polls.

He said Narayanganj BNP president Taimur Alam, senior local leaders Gias Uddin and Abul Kalam were busy with the electioneering of their relatives’ who contested as the councillor candidates in the polls. “The role of local leaders and election results demoralised the party grassroots.”

However, the trio turned down the allegation saying they worked sincerely for Shakhawat.

Taimur said their party’s candidate selection was not right one as Shakhawat was not familiar to people. “I think as people did not know much about him they did not vote for him.

According to the results announced by the Election Commission, Ivy got a total of 175,611 votes while Shakhawat polled 96,044 votes.