Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) on Monday dismissed claims that more than one fifth of votes cast in the 13th parliamentary election were fraudulent.
In a statement, the organisation said its findings had been misread and shared in a misleading way, creating confusion about the credibility of the election.
TIB clarified that its research was based on field-level observations using random sampling across 70 selected constituencies. Within that sample, incidents involving one or more fake votes were found in 21.4 percent of the constituencies studied.
However, the organisation stressed that this does not mean 21.4 percent of all votes cast nationwide were fake. Describing the data in that way is “completely incorrect, baseless and misleading,” TIB said.
The watchdog also urged media outlets that published inaccurate interpretations to issue corrections.
Failure to do so, TIB warned, would be seen as a deliberate attempt to distort the organisation’s research and mislead the public.