Salman Fazlur Rahman and Salma Islam will again battle it out for the Dhaka-1 parliamentary seat (Dohar and Nawabganj).

On Monday morning, the Dhaka deputy commissioner and returning officer allotted the election symbols to the seven contestants vying for the seat.

The frontrunners for the race are Salman - incumbent MP and advisor to the prime minister - and Salma – an MP from a reserved seat for women and co-chairman of the Jatiya Party.

Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan Kismat accepted the boat symbol from election officials on behalf of Salman’s campaign.

“From today, we take to the field,” he said. “We will do whatever is necessary, within the law, to bring victory to the boat.”

Zillur Rahman accepted the plough symbol from election officials on behalf of Salma’s campaign.

“Our party will win 100 percent,” he said. “We have done a great deal of work for development.”

The five other candidates for the seat are Trinamool BNP’s Mufid Khan, the Bangladesh Supreme Party’s Shamsuzzaman Chowdhury, the Gono Front’s Sheikh Md Ali, the Workers Party’s Md Karim Ali, and the National People’s Party’s A Hakim.

Both the frontrunners have previously been elected to the Dhaka-1 seat.

During the 2014 general election, the seat was contested by both the Awami League and the Jatiya Party. Salma, the chairman of Jamuna Group and wife of its founder Nurul Islam Babul, defeated Awami League candidate Abdul Mannan Khan and served as MP for five years.

In 2018, the Jatiya Party withdrew from the seat as part of its Grand Alliance agreement with the Awami League. Salman contested the seat as the Awami League candidate, while Salma ran as an independent.

Salman received 302,993 votes, while Salma won only 37,763.

Despite losing the race for Dhaka-1, Salma was later chosen as MP to a parliamentary seat reserved for women.

Beximco Group Vice Chairman Salman was also the president of the FBCCI, the apex trade organisation in Bangladesh, in the 90s.

He contested the 1996 election in the Dhanmondi area as a member of his own ‘Samriddha Bangladesh Andolan’ group before joining the Awami League.

He ran for the Dhaka-1 seat as the boat candidate in the 2001 elections but lost to his relative and then BNP leader Nazmul Huda. He won the seat a decade and a half later as the Awami League candidate.