Rezwanul Haque Chowdhury and Golam Rabbani
Awami League president and prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday removed the incumbent president and general secretary of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, an associate body of the AL.
She appointed an acting president and an acting general secretary for the student organisation till its next council session.
Rezwanul Haque Chowdhury and Golam Rabbani were dropped from BCL’s two top positions before they completed their two-year term, AL general secretary Obaidul Quader told reporters at a press conference at the Ganabhaban.
The decision came from a meeting of the AL central executive committee at the Ganabhaban, the official residence of the prime minister, with Sheikh Hasina in the chair.
Quader said that from now on first vice-president Al Nahian Khan Joy and first joint general secretary Lekhok Bhattacharya would perform as BCL’s acting president and general secretary respectively.
He also said that the next council session of the Awami League will be held on December 20-21.
The decision came a week after Sheikh Hasina at a joint meeting of the party’s parliamentary board and local government elections nomination board on September 7 gave opinion in favour of dissolving the BCL central committee, said AL leaders, as she was annoyed at the committee’s activities.
The BCL president and general secretary were then disallowed to enter the Ganabhaban from September 11.
The BCL top leaders faced various allegations after Jahangirnagar university vice-chancellor Farzana Islam made an oral complaint to the prime minister that the two leaders demanded a ‘four to six per cent cut’ from a Tk 1,445-crore project at Jahangirnagar University.
A six per cent commission on the project fund would be Tk 86 crore.
According to AL leaders, some senior AL leaders also complained to the PM against the BCL leaders about their misbehaviour in a September 7 meeting.
The AL leaders said that AL advisory council member Tofail Ahmed, education minister Dipu Moni and home minister Asaduzzaman Khan had said that they witnessed that the BCL leaders did not conform to the party discipline.
They testified that the PM lambasted the leadership for failing to complete the council sessions at different universities, colleges and district units of the student body.
They further said that the leadership had also been accused of failing to control the unrest following the announcement of the organisation’s full committee in May.
There were also allegations that some married students and activists as well as supporters of the Chhatra Dal and Chhatra Shibir had made their way into the BCL central committee by managing its key leaders, they noted.
They disclosed that Rezwanul and Rabbani were waiting at the Ganabhaban to meet the PM after the meeting. But when the meeting ended AL central leaders advised them to go back.
Later, AL general secretary Obaidul Qauder, too, asked the two student leaders to leave the Ganabhaban and they did, said AL leaders.
Earlier in July 2018, Hasina selected BCL’s new central leadership for two years.
The announcement of the new BCL executive committee came nearly two months after its national council session was held in May.
Source: New Age.
