BNP defers mass rally to Friday in Nayapaltan

Staff Reporter :
The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has rescheduled its grand rally on Friday to avoid presumed political confrontation as Awami League has also called its programme on the same day and to ease the sufferings of the people.

In an emergency meeting at BNP Chairperson’s Gulshan office, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir announced the fresh date for the rally.
“BNP firmly believes in democratic values. In a bid to carry on its peaceful movement for restoring democracy, I am announcing the grand rally to be held at 2pm on Friday instead of Thursday,” he said.
“We hope that the government as well as any other of its institutions would not hinder to hold this grand rally which is being held as part of BNP’s peaceful and democratic movement to restore democracy,” the Secretary General said.

“People will consider the hindrance of our programme as an obstacle to hold a free and fair election. Those who will hinder our programme will be deemed as individuals undermining democracy and fair election,” he said.

BNP has changed the date of its grand rally in the capital as the police did not give them permission to hold the event at Nayapaltan or Suhrawardy Udyan on its scheduled day on Thursday.
Dhaka Metropalitan Police (DMP) has offered the BNP to hold their rally on Golapbagh playground near to Syedabad to shun public sufferings.

On the other hand, police reportedly conducted searching in households of the BNP leaders and activists and detained several dozens of them ahead of the grand rally in the capital.
Till Thursday evening, at least 64 BNP men were arrested over the last 24 hours and sent to jail, ahead of the grand rally.

Court sources and BNP men said that police produced all of them before separate Dhaka courts on Wednesday.
Among them, 21 were shown arrested under Section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure while the rest were arrested in various cases pending with different police stations in Dhaka.
Several defence lawyers said that charges of involvement in vandalism, arson attack and obstructing police duty were brought against the 43 arrestees. The identities of the arrestees were not found till the reports filed on Wednesday evening.

Besides, several hundred police were deployed across the Nayapaltan BNP office areas with water cannons and riot cars.
The police have evicted all the BNP men from the central office on Wednesday afternoon when several thousand activists of the party gathered there.