Feni’s Mehedi Hasan has served since 2022 as assistant publicity secretary of the Chhatra Dal in Yakubpur union of the district’s Daganbhuiyan upazila. Because his name was on the Chhatra Dal committee, he was driven from his home that year by attacks from the now-fallen Awami League’s activists, taking shelter with his family in a small rented house in Feni town and working at a cattle farm to scrape by. Painfully, even after the 5 August 2024 change of power, he has had to make a living driving a rickshaw, unable to return to his area. The same Awami League leaders who once persecuted him have now merged with the BNP and are blocking his return. So even after the BNP came to power, Mehedi failed in his attempt to go to his own home; his livelihood is still that auto-rickshaw.
Many sacrificing grassroots BNP activists like Mehedi are living in hardship, and in many places are still being attacked. Jugantor spoke to leaders of various district units about why this is happening despite the party being in power. According to district leaders, after 5 August opportunists, “hybrids” and infiltrators have risen in the BNP. Many who took part in no past movement and held no party post have now posed as BNP, becoming power-brokers everywhere after the party came to power, and some have got involved in various misdeeds, leaving the loyalists cornered. Reaching most ministers and MPs has become difficult for local activists, and top district leaders no longer check on them as before.
Asked about this, Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister and BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told Jugantor: “I am always among my workers, so the complaint about ministers is not correct.” On the Daganbhuiyan Chhatra Dal leader’s hardship, he said the local leaders there would certainly look into it and that they would try to see what could be done. Water Resources Minister and BNP joint secretary general Shahid Uddin Chowdhury Annie said he regularly visits his area and keeps in touch with his activists, who can always reach him by phone; he said the BNP has hundreds of thousands of activists, some with very weak earnings and helpless, and that the party would support them once informed.
Asked on Friday, Mehedi Hasan sent more than a dozen photos and videos of his presence on the streets in the July uprising and past movements. “Those I did politics with no longer recognise me now. I went to local BNP and Chhatra Dal leaders; no one helped me return to the area,” he told Jugantor. He said district BNP leader Ratan recognised him a week ago after getting into his auto-rickshaw, and that Chhatra Dal central president Rakibul Islam phoned to check on him on Wednesday night; he told the president that those from the Awami League who had tortured him were now mingling with the BNP, and Rakib reassured him that he would stay in the area and do politics. A video of the conversation has gone viral, showing BNP leader Ratan, seated beside him, weeping.
At least 15 former and current leaders of the Chhatra Dal, Jubo Dal and Swechchhasebak Dal told Jugantor that most associate-body leaders had finished their studies at various universities, with many friends now government officers, but that many had not had time to look for jobs after entering politics, and some had even been cut off from their families by the past government’s attacks and cases. Yet now that the party is in power, no leader checks on them as before, and ministers and MPs give them no importance. They said those who used to phone ten times a day to bring activists for processions during the movement now do not answer the phone. They continue in politics in the hope that party chairman and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman will value the loyalists, and demand a cell be formed to employ the loyalists — especially educated activists — in various fields.
Two former Chhatra Dal vice-presidents lamented to Jugantor that their parents had thought they could at least spend Eid together once the BNP came to power, but that they could not go home for either Eid because of the cost. The grassroots frustration also showed in Chhatra Dal central president Rakibul Islam’s recent speech in the presence of party chief Tarique Rahman, in which he reminded ministers and MPs never to forget the days when countless Chhatra Dal activists shed blood — on which the BNP government stands — and urged them not to indulge relatives. Several district-level BNP leaders said they were worried by recent incidents, including the bloody beating of a Rangpur Swechchhasebak Dal member-secretary, Rakibul Islam, inside a police station, and an attack by Awami League activists on five BNP and associate-body activists in Pirojpur’s Indurkani upazila, which they do not see as isolated. They said that three months into the government, no control had yet been established over the administration. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said some people want to create instability in the country, and that some political parties are involved in causing these incidents.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report