Anti-Rampal movement : BNP calls on oil-gas committee to accept its support

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Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Wednesday called on the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports to accept the party’s endorsement in the latter’s ongoing movement against coal-fired power plant in Rampal near Sunderbans.

At a discussion at Dhaka Reporters’ Unity, Fakhrul told the national committee, ‘We support the movement of Anu Muhammad (member-secretary of the national committee)… We are endorsing our support to them and they should accept our support’.

‘No scattered movement should be carried out’, he said, adding, ‘We hope they would work together to unite the nation (against Rampal power plant)’.

The committee has been protesting against the power plant since Bangladesh signed a deal with India to set up the 1,300-megawatt thermal power plant at Bagerhat’s Rampal, near the Sundarbans.

They claim that the coal-fired power plant will threaten the ecological balance of the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Fakhrul, who was the chief guest of the discussion ‘Save Sunderbans, Drive out Rampal power plant’, said every patriotic people opposed the Rampal power plant, but the government was adamant to carry on the project, as he said the government was committed to India for implementation of the project.

‘They can do it because they have no accountability to people, because they are not elected by people’, he said.

Zia Cyber Force, a BNP-backed organisation, organised the function, where BNP vice-chairman AZM Zahid Hossain, BNP chairperson’s adviser Abdus Salam, among others, spoke.

Source: New Age