DINAJPUR — A faction of Chhatra Dal in Dinajpur staged a protest march, held a rally and blocked roads by setting fires to demand the cancellation of the BNP-affiliated student wing’s newly announced district committee.
On Thursday afternoon, May 7, supporters of the former district committee marched from the grounds of Academy School in the city to demand the new convening committee be scrapped. The procession moved through Modern Mor and ended at Lily Mor, where activists held a protest rally and burned tires.
At the rally, Rubel Islam, the recently outgoing acting president of the district Chhatra Dal, said forming a new committee that excludes grassroots leaders who endured years of repression, attacks and lawsuits under the “fascist Awami government” amounts to discrimination. “We tried to contact the central committee but they did not respond to phone calls,” he said.
Md. Abuzar Setu, the recently outgoing general secretary of the district Chhatra Dal, said he was not even informed that a new committee had been announced. “The most surprising thing is that neither the convener nor the member secretary of the municipal Chhatra Dal is on the district committee,” he said. Setu said younger activists who had clung to the organization through years of repression had also been left out, and he called on policymakers to issue a new committee in coordination with the former district leadership.
The new eight-member convening committee for Dinajpur district Chhatra Dal was announced in a letter signed by Rakibul Islam Rakib, president of the Chhatra Dal central committee, and General Secretary Nasir Uddin Nasir. The letter named Md. Abdur Razzak as convener, Zakaria Habib Joni as senior joint convener and six others as joint conveners. The committee was directed to form a full district body within 30 days.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report