The Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Saturday said that the new textbook for the Class IX and X contained misleading information about the BNP and urged the government to remove the information immediately from the book.
The party demanded punishment of those who have inserted the misleading information in the book.
At a press conference held at the BNP central office at Naya Paltan in the capital Dhaka, the party鈥檚 senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, alleged that supporters of the ousted autocratic regime were attempting to implement a project aimed at brainwashing students.
He claimed that this was being done by glorifying the Awami League in textbooks while undermining and discrediting the BNP by portraying it as a party born in barracks.
Rizvi said that in the newly printed and revised 鈥楥ivics and Citizenship鈥� textbook for the Class IX and X for the new academic year, the oligarchs of Hasina鈥檚 regime have written on the page 73 that the Awami League is the largest political party in the country.
He claimed that the relentless propaganda, misinformation and smear campaign against the BNP during the Sheikh Hasina鈥檚 16-year rule continued to be evident in textbooks.
Rizvi said that instead of referring to BNP founder Ziaur Rahman as a former president, the textbook described him as a former army chief by stating, 鈥楤NP was founded on September 1, 1978, during the military rule of former army chief Major General Ziaur Rahman.鈥�
Rizvi claimed that Awami loyalists, both within and outside the National Curriculum and Textbook Board have inserted Sheikh Hasina鈥檚 false narratives into the textbook.
鈥榃e want to make it clear to the people of this country that the BNP was not born in a cantonment. On September 1, 1978, when Shaheed president Ziaur Rahman announced the formation of the BNP at a press conference at Ramna in Dhaka, he was serving as the elected president of the country,鈥� he said.
鈥楾herefore, the claim that the BNP was formed in barracks is nothing but a distortion of history,鈥� Rizvi said.
He demanded an immediate detection of fascist collaborators at all levels, both within and outside the NCTB, and called for strict legal actions against them for their involvement in the distortion.
