Saifur Rahman Sohag, and Zakir Hossain have been elected President and General Secretary of Bangladesh Chhatra League, the students' wing of ruling Awami League.
The new president and general secretary are supposed to lead the country's oldest and largest student organisation for the next two years.
After the election results, the BCL leaders went to meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Later a statment of the organization said Azizul Haque Rana, Asaduzzaman Nadim, Mobarak Hossain have been made first vice-president, joint general secretary and first organizing secretary respectively.
Prime Minister's son and ICT Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy in his Facebook post congratulated the new office bearers of the BCL.
Sohag, a post-graduate student of Linguistic at Dhaka University, comes from Madaripur district and was the Environment Secretary in the immediate-past committee.
A post graduate student of Political Science, Zakir was an assistant secretary in the last committee. He comes from Moulvibazar district.
Both the student leaders led Muktijoddha Ziaur Rahman Hall Unit of the organisation at Dhaka University.
Sohag bagged 2,690 votes while Zakir secured 2,676 ballots out of 2,819 votes cast in the election that took place on the second day of the 28th National Council of the BCL at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh auditorium in the city on Sunday.
A total of 3,138 BCL councillors from 110 district units including 9 units from abroad cast their votes to elect their new leadership.
Chief Election Commissioner of the election, Suman Kundu, announced the results at the IEB auditorium Sunday night.
Eight candidates were in the race for the post of president while 16 battled out for the general secretary.
Suman Kundo, Mostafizur Rahman Mostak and Sheikh Rasel were the election commissioners and President HM Bodiuzzaman Shohag and General Secretary Siddique NazmulAlam monitored the whole election process.
Earlier the election was held from 11:00am to 5:30pm at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh auditorium under the supervision of AL leader Jahangir Kabir Nanak and a large number of former BCL leaders.
Several thousand BCL activists started joining the council from early morning at the venue. They chanted slogans in favour of their chosen leaders throughout the day. The candidates were busy soliciting votes from the councillors peacefully.
Speaking at the council session, AL leader Jahangir Kabir Nanak thanked the BCL activists for helping the election commissioners to conduct the election in the most transparent way.
In an instant reaction to the Daily Observer, Saifur Rahman Sohag said, "I will follow the path of Bangabandhu for leading the organization." Sohag wished to practice idealistic politics.
The newly-elected Secretary General Zakir Hossain expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and vowed to work for the welfare of the students.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, also President of the AL, inaugurated the 28th National Convention of the BCL at the Suhrawardy Udyan in the capital on Saturday. On that day, Sheikh Hasina said the new BCL leadership will be chosen by votes cast in transparent ballot boxes. She also advised BCL men to elect meritorious and regular students as their leaders.
Following Sheikh Hasina's statement, many of the 64 president and 142 general secretary candidates started lobbying afresh to get their names included in the panel blessed by a section of influential former BCL and present AL leaders, say BCL sources.
The sources said a syndicate, led by former BCL president Liakat Shikdar, has lent unofficial support for a panel led by Saifur Rahman Shohag as president candidate and Zakir Hossain as secretary candidate in the election.