Several polling stations ablaze on eve of Bangladesh poll

Nearly 60 polling stations in Bangladesh were set on fire and three people were killed on the eve of Sunday's election in which the ruling Awami League looks certain to prevail in a walkover as the main opposition party boycotts the poll.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) called a 48-hour strike from Saturday morning and urged voters to stay away from the "farcical" election. Traffic in Dhaka was lighter than normal for a Saturday although some shops were open.

Without the BNP's participation, fewer than half of 300 parliamentary constituencies are being contested.

"I call upon countrymen to fully boycott the disgraceful farce in the name of election of January 5," BNP chief Begum Khaleda Zia, who has been under what she calls virtual house arrest, said in a statement late on Friday. The government has denied that she is confined or under house arrest.

The BNP is protesting against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's scrapping of the practice of having a caretaker government oversee elections and many of its leaders are in jail or in hiding. The impasse undermines the poll's legitimacy and is fuelling worries of economic gridlock and further violence in the impoverished South Asian nation of 160 million.

The office of prime minister has been held by Hasina or Khaleda for all but two of the past 22 years and the rivalry between them is bitter.