Pabna-3 MP Mokbul Hossain has 20 Bighas of land worth Tk 2,000 in total, or Tk 100 per Bigha, according to the affidavit he has submitted to the Election Commission for contesting in the parliamentary polls.

Nowhere in Bangladesh land is available at such a throwaway price. Then how did Mokbul acquire vast land at a low price?

Before independence from Pakistan in 1971, the price of the low-lying land that was mostly under the water of the Chalan Beel was between Tk 40 - Tk 100 per Bigha (20 Bigha=2.7 hectares), said Mokbul.

“I’ve mentioned the price at the time of purchase following the law, just like I had done in the 2008 and other polls,” explained the lawmaker seeking reelection.

Such rules have called the entire process of submitting affidavits and the scrutiny by the commission into question.

Mashrafe Bin Mortaza of Narail-2 mentioned Tk 824,000 as the price of a 5-katha residential plot in Dhaka’s Purbachal, but such a piece of land is difficult to buy at that rate even in the towns outside the capital.

The former captain of Bangladesh national cricket team explained that the sum mentioned in the affidavit is the registration cost for the land he received as a gift from the government after defeating Australia in 2005. “Everyone in the team got plots.”

AFM Bahauddin Nasim, the Awami League candidate for Dhaka-8, said his wife has 25 Bhori of gold (1 Bhori = 11.664 grams) worth Tk 350,000, while the current market price of gold is over Tk 100,000 per Bhori.

“I’ve mentioned the rate at which the gold was bought,” said Nasim.

These affidavits, now publicly available on the commission website, have puzzled Zahid Patwary, a resident of Dhaka’s Mirpur.

“A citizen is obviously fortunate if they get a piece of land through a lottery from the government. But what’s the benefit of mentioning the meagre buying price [of that land] in affidavits?” he wondered.

“Gold was priced at Tk 6,000 three decades ago, and the price of one Bigha of land might have been Tk 100 sixty years ago. But showing those prices to calculate the current assets does not seem right to me,” he said.

Besides the rule to mention the buying price of assets, the candidates do not have the obligation to submit accounts of how their earnings or assets have increased.

And the commission does not have any mechanism to check the information in a short period of time.

A candidate will lose nomination, and in some cases, face legal action if they provide false information in the affidavits, but there has been no such instance.

“Not checking these information means only formalities are being done, not to achieve the objective,” said Iftekharuzzaman, the executive director of Transparency International, Bangladesh.

“It is never verified whether the income and assets of a candidate are consistent.”

The returning officers can check the tax return, loan information and criminal charges in affidavits, but nothing more than that, said former election commissioner Rafiqul Islam.

“The Election Commission does not check on its own the information given in affidavits.”

Md Alamgir, an incumbent election commissioner, said the EC checks the information if someone challenges them. “The EC has the powers to cancel nomination if the information is proved to be wrong.”