The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies in the ongoing simultaneous movement on Saturday announced to observe a dawn-to-dusk countrywide hartal for Monday.
The BNP and its allies in separate programmes and statements announced the hartal demanding the cancellation of the next general election schedule, resignation of the Awami League government, and the handover of power to a party-neutral election-time caretaker administration for holding the next national poll.
It will be the fourth call of hartal by the BNP and its allies since October 29. They also enforced eleven rounds of countrywide blockades during the period.
BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, on behalf of his party, announced the fresh programme at a virtual press briefing Saturday afternoon.
The hartal will be enforced between 6:00am and 6:00pm on Monday, he added.
Rizvi also urged the country’s people and the supporters of the BNP and other opposition parties to observe the programme spontaneously to make it a success.
He said that the fresh hartal programme was also meant to mount pressure on the government to quit, hold the next election under a non-party neutral government, and release party leaders and activists, including its secretary general, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
Rizvi alleged that police arrested at least 60 leaders and activists of the party in the past 24 hours, adding that more than 285 leaders and activists had been made accused in three fresh cases.
A total of 21,755 BNP people were arrested, and 1023 cases were filed against the party’s people since the last week of October, he added.
Earlier, the BNP and other opposition parties in the ongoing anti-government simultaneous movement also observed a human chain programme all over the country on December 10 as a way to mark International Human Rights Day.
BNP has been observing strike and blockade programmes since October 29 following the party’s thwarted grand rally in Dhaka on October 28 amid attacks by police and the ruling Awami League supporters.
Ganatantra Mancha in a statement on Saturday said that they, in a meeting at the central office of Ganasamhati Andolan in Dhaka, decided to enforce a dawn-to-dusk hartal for Monday.
Jamaat-e-Islami in a statement also announced the same agitation programme.
Earlier, the BNP and its allies enforced 11 rounds of countrywide blockade and three rounds of hartal between October 29 and December 13, demanding the resignation of the government, handing over power to an election-time party-neutral government, and cancellation of the January 7 national election schedule.
New Age