Leaders of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party said on Friday that people rejected ‘dummy’ upazila parishad elections like the ‘dummy’ parliamentary election held on January 7.
They said that voters did not turn up at the polling stations and that vote rigging went unabated inside the polling stations during the first phase of the upazila polls.
BNP leaders came up with the remarks while addressing a rally arranged by the party’s Dhaka City South unit in front of the BNP Naya Paltan office in Dhaka.
The rally was arranged to mark World Mother’s Day, demanding the release of BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia, the withdrawal of the cases against Tarique Rahman, and the release of all political prisoners.
Addressing as chief guest, BNP standing committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy said that the people boycotted the upazila polls. Â
‘There were no voters. But vote rigging was there to increase the cast vote rate from 3 per cent to 40 per cent,’ he said.
A huge number of BNP and its front organisation leaders and activists joined the rally with banners and festoons.
A procession was also brought out after the rally, which paraded several key roads in the Naya Paltan area.
In response to Obaidul Quader’s statement that BNP is operated by remote control, Gayeshwar said that the remote control of BNP is in the hands of Tarique Rahman and Khaleda Zia.
Gayeshwar wanted to know from Quader who held the remote control of AL.
‘Is the remote control in the hands of Modi, in the hands of Ajit Doval, or in the hands of the chief of RAW?’ he said, referring to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
‘Obaidul Quader had said that if India was not on our side, then we could not have held the January 7 election. That means democracy for the Awami League is of the India, by the India, and for the India.’
Gayeshwar said that these days Bangladesh was hanging on the barbed wire of India, while the country’s freedom and sovereignty were also hanging on the barbed wire of India, like Felani.
About the border killing, he said that they [India] were killing the people of Bangladesh every day.
‘Our people died and took back the body through a flag meeting. That is a shame. What is happening in the East? There is no attention from the government,’ he said.
He asked the members of the law enforcement agencies not to cross their limit.
Addressing the rally, BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said that the people of the country boycotted the dummy upazila parishad polls like the dummy and one-sided parliament election.’
‘There is a culture of looting going on all around the country, but the people will not tolerate the misrule for long,’ he said.
He also said that the ‘dummy’ government was not giving benefits to the real business people of Bangladesh but giving benefits to the business people of India.
‘India’s Adani group alone has been given the opportunity to make a profit of Tk 10,000 crore a year,’ he said.
Rizvi also alleged that the prime minister’s relatives were getting opportunities for looting, and they used to be the richest in Singapore earlier, but now they were becoming the richest in the world.
