Expressing optimism, BNP today said it would form the government after securing more than two-thirds of the seats with public support.

“Based on the vote count received so far and detailed seat-wise information, we are very hopeful about this victory,” said BNP Central Election Steering Committee Spokesperson Mahdi Amin at 11:45pm on Thursday.

At a press conference at the party’s election office in Dhaka's Gulshan, Mahdi also said BNP Chairman Tarique Rahman has unofficially won from the Dhaka-17 and Bogura-6 constituencies.

“Since last night (Wednesday), our political opponents have been involved in different kinds of manipulation, fraud, centre-grabbing, and other crimes. Even then, with the sincere love and support of the people, we have seen that candidates of the ‘sheaf of paddy’ symbol are leading by big margins in a large number of seats. Many have unofficially won,” Mahdi Amin said.

He said people witnessed various irregularities, fraud and violence in different parts of the country even on election day.

“Especially in some specific seats, election engineering was done to make certain candidates win,” he said.

“There is enough reason to believe this. For example, only in Dhaka city, in seats like Dhaka-8, Dhaka-11, Dhaka-13, and Dhaka-16, the counting of votes and the announcement of results have been delayed intentionally and are still being delayed,” he said.

Mahdi alleged that a particular political party spread propaganda and violated the election code of conduct in an attempt to narrow the significant margin of victory of BNP candidates contesting with the ‘sheaf of paddy’ symbol.

“As a result, in some specific seats, this election engineering may have reduced the margin of defeat and somewhat affected the spontaneous participation of voters across the country,” he added.