The presence of the ruling Awami League was overwhelming inside and outside some polling centres in the first four hours of voting in the Gazipur City Corporation election today.

Visiting around 30 centres in Gazipur town and Tongi areas, The Daily Star correspondents found large groups of supporters of AL mayoral candidate Azmat Ullah Khan outside the centres.

In most of these places there were no supporters of independent candidate Zaida Khatun, the mother of suspended GCC mayor Zahangir Alam.

Inside the centres, polling agents of Azmat Ullah dominated. Here too, other than one or two centres, our correspondents found no polling agents of Zaida Khatun.

While accompanying his mother when she was casting her vote at the Chandana Center in Gazipur around 10:00am, Zahangir alleged that in some centres, their agents were being threatened and intimidated.

Azmat Ullah, after casting his vote at Tongi Darussalam Madrasa around 9:00am, denied allegations that agents of other candidates were being driven away from polling centres.

"You should specify from which centre the agents have been driven away. If other candidates can't provide agents, I'm not going to take that responsibility," he told reporters.

Voting started at 8:00am this morning with electronic voting machines.