New Delhi : Days after former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina made her first public address in Delhi and vowed to return to the nation, a Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) lawmaker has called for his party’s merger with the now banned Awami League (headed by Hasina). That being said, others in the BNP, and the Bangladesh government, have expressed different opinions, which are divergent and are contrary to the views of Chowdhury.
August 5, Sheikh Hasina attended a press conference organised in Delhi by the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of South Asia. The event marked the former PM’s first public address in two years, after the student protests in July and August 2024 ousted the Hasina’s Awami League government and forced the PM to seek safe refuge in India. The Tarique Rahman-led BNP government, which came to power after elections in February this year, has long demanded Hasina’s extradition from India.
Dhaka has also previously urged New Delhi to refrain from providing “fugitive Hasina, a platform, who its foreign office said “could use Indian territory to make political statements or engage in activities aimed at creating instability within Bangladesh”. Ahead of the event, Information and Broadcasting Adviser to Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman, Zahed Ur Rahman, warned local media outlets against publishing or broadcasting Hasina’s remarks.
According to the Prothom Alo report, Chowdhury, who first won on a BNP ticket in 1996, made the remarks while addressing a party rally at Thana Point in Derai municipality. “The Awami League is not our enemy, they are our allies. We fought the Liberation War together with them. Awami League will merge with BNP soon,” he was quoted as saying. Chowdhury was speaking at a rally organised by the Derai upazila and municipal units of BNP titled “17 years of relentless struggle for democracy and the bloody July uprising.”
On Thursday, August 6, BNP Senior Joint Secretary General and PM Rahman’s Political Adviser Ruhul Kabir Rizvi criticised Sheikh Hasina’s presser, accusing Indian policymakers of deliberately arranging it on the anniversary of the July Uprising to “insult the martyrs of the movement.” According to a report by the Dhaka-based news outlet, The Daily Star, Rizvi made the remarks after placing wreaths at the graves of BNP founder Ziaur Rahman and former prime minister Khaleda Zia.
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