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Selina Hayat Ivy starts second term as Narayanganj Mayor
Selina Hayat Ivy is on her way to begin her second successive term as mayor of the river port city of Narayanganj after being administered the oath of office by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday.
Published : 5 Jan 2017, 06:00 AM
Updated : 5 Jan 2017, 07:39 AM
Local government minister Khandker Mosharaff Hossain administered the oath of office to 27 councillors elected from general constituencies and nine elected from those reserved for women candidates.
The prime minister later joined a photo shoot with Ivy and other councillors.
Two weeks ago, Ivy was re-elected Narayanganj Mayor when she beat her nearest rival BNP's Shakhawat Hossain Khan by a decisive margin of 79,568 votes.
This was the first time the Narayanganj civic polls were organised on party lines.
Five years ago, Ivy had beaten fellow Awami League contender AKM Shamim Osman by a margin of more than 100,000 votes when the polls were held on non-partisan lines and the BNP-Jamaat alliance had boycotted it.
Ivy had served as the chairperson of the Narayanganj municipality for eight years before becoming the first elected woman mayor of Bangladesh five years ago.
A foreign-trained medical practitioner by profession, Ivy joined the city politics in 2003, riding on the popularity of her father Ali Ahmed Chunka.
Chunka was the first chairman of the Narayanganj municipality and immensely popular as a local Awami League leader.
Ivy held together the Awami League in Narayanganj during the 2001-2006 BNP-Jamaat government when things were less than hunky-dory for it.
The 50-year-old doctor had joined the Chhatra League as an intern in Mitford Hospital after completing her medical degree from Russia in 1992.
In 1994, she joined the 200-bed hospital in Narayanganj and a year later, left for New Zealand for higher studies.
Mother of two sons, Ivy returned to the country, though her husband Quazi Ahsan Hayat has remained behind in New Zealand.
Her foray in the Narayanganj Awami League began in 2002 by running in municipality elections.
Ivy emerged as the main challenger of the Osman family that had returned to dominate the Awami League politics in Narayanganj after the end of the military-backed caretaker regime.
On 30 Oct, 2011, Ivy took on Shamim Osman in the first civic polls after Narayanganj municipality had been upgraded to a city corporation.
The huge margin of her victory and that she was the elected mayor helped her emerge from the shadows of her father and eke out a space of her own.
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