“We don’t accept the hartal as BNP is going to enforce it to create anarchy in the city,” Enayet Ullah, the president of the association told reporters.
“BNP has the right to enforce hartal and we’ve also the right to operate our vehicles,” he added.
Enayet said BNP will be held responsible if their vehicles are damaged during the hartal hours.
Earlier, BNP called a dawn-to-dusk hartal in Dhaka for Sunday protesting “massive vote frauds” in the elections to Dhaka south and north city corporations.
BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir made the announcement at a press conference at the party’s Nayapaltan central office on Saturday evening.
“We totally turn down the election results. The election results were manipulated influencing the election process. To register our protest against it, we call hartal for tomorrow (Sunday). This hartal will be observed from 6am to 6pm in Dhaka city,” he said.
The BNP leader said their shutdown is also meant for registering their party’s protest against the ‘massive vote rigging and frauds and stampeding the people’s verdict by force.
He hoped that the city dwellers will observe the hartal peacefully and thus cooperate with their party to ‘restore’ democracy.
Fakhrul said ambulances, hearse, medicine and food shops will remain out of purview of the hartal.