Syed Ashraful Islam has lost his job as LGRD minister but will remain as a member of the Cabinet without any portfolio, ending two days of speculations.
Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, currently in charge of expatriate welfare and overseas affairs, will be the new LGRD minister, the Cabinet Division announced Thursday.
Cabinet Secretary Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told bdnews24.com Thursday afternoon that the new LGRD minister would continue to look after his old ministry “for the time being”.
The Awami League general secretary has been in charge of the politically-important Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development since Sheikh Hasina returned as prime minister for a second time on Jan 6, 2009 and for long known as a trusted lieutenant of the party chief.
Speculations on Tuesday led to news reports that the Kishoreganj MP had lost his position at the LGRD ministry after an ECNEC meeting saw the prime minister express her “anger” over the minister’s absence.
Reports had it that she had ordered removal of Syed Ashraf as Minister for LGRD and Cooperatives amid allegations of his “almost regular” absence from such important meetings, but there was no official confirmation on the day.
Secretariat sources say the minister would hardly be seen in his ministry office in the past six and a half years.
Party insiders say a number of senior leaders were also critical of Syed Ashraf’s style of functioning and that civil servants often found it difficult to work with the truant minister.
Son of Bangladesh’s acting President during the 1971 Liberation War, Syed Nazrul Islam, who was brutally murdered inside Dhaka’s Central Jail on Nov 3, 1975 along with three others, Ashraful proved his mettle when the military-controlled emergency government sought to punish politicians and banish the two top leaders including Hasina.
Party and government sources, however, say he will continue to act as the prime minister’s chief political adviser and that both are likely to remain “on best of terms”.
There has been no immediate reaction forthcoming from Syed Ashraf, who had advised the press against reading too much into Tuesday’s murmurs of his losing the key portfolio.
Before the first official word on his chop came, the 63-year old went to the Prime Minister’s Office at noon and spoke to Hasina privately for an hour.
Khandker Mosharraf was the first chief engineer of the Rural Works Programme under the ministry and had a role in the creation of LGED.
Syed Ashraf’s removal marked the first shuffle in the Cabinet; Abdul Latif Siddiqui was dismissed from the telecoms and ICT ministry for his controversial remarks but nobody replaced him.
Syed Ashraf was entrusted with the duties of Awami League general secretary when central leaders including party chief Hasina was put behind bars during the 2007-8 emergency rule.
Abdul Jalil, who was general secretary, was released from prison at the time but could not return to the post.
The council later elected Syed Ashraf, who along with former president Md Zillur Rahman shepherded the party during those troubled times, as general secretary in 2009.
Before that, he took oath as LGRD Minister of Hasina’s government in 2009. He was given the same ministry after the Awami League returned to power in 2014.
The general secretary of a party in Bangladesh usually gets to be LGRD minister. Zillur Rahman, too, was at the helm of the ministry during Hasina’s previous government. The BNP, too, has been following this norm.
Syed Ashraf was general secretary of Awami League’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League at Mymensingh during his student days.
He went to London after his father was murdered at Dhaka Central Jail along with three other national leaders who were captured after Bangabandhu’s assassination in 1975.
There, he involved himself in Awami League’s activities.
He returned home in 1996 and was elected to Parliament. He was made State Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism.
The Kishoreganj-1 MP has won all parliamentary elections since 1996.
Source: Bd news24
