The Election Commission on the fourth day of appeal hearings against returning officers’ decisions for the 13th Jatiya Sangsad elections on Tuesday reinstated 53 nominations and cancelled 17.

On the day, the Election Commission heard 68 appeals against returning officers’ decisions to cancel nominations while two appeals seeking the cancellation of valid candidates were heard.

The hearings, held between 10:00am and 5:00pm at the EC auditorium in the capital’s Agargaon, involved candidates, along with their representatives, who had challenged the cancellation of their nominations.

The appeal process is scheduled to continue until January 18.

Over the past four days, the Election Commission heard a total of 278 appeals against returning officers’ decisions on nominations for the Jatiya Sangsad elections.

Of these, 203 nominations were reinstated while 64 were cancelled.

The Election Commission received a total of 645 appeals challenging the returning officers’ scrutiny of nomination papers for the parliamentary elections.

The EC began accepting appeals on January 5 and closed the process on January 9.

Earlier, during the five-day nomination paper scrutiny between December 30 and January 4, the 69 returning officers – two divisional commissioners, 64 deputy commissioners, and three regional election commissioners – declared that the nominations of 1,842 candidates were valid while those of 723 were invalid.

A total of 2,568 aspirants submitted nomination papers for the country’s 300 constituencies by the December 29 deadline to contest the parliamentary elections.

The election commission on December 11 announced the election schedule to hold the JS elections and the referendum on the July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order simultaneously on February 12.