A group of BNP grassroots leaders on Thursday urged the party policymakers to prepare the party’s all units in Dhaka for waging a movement for forcing the government to quit and hold the 12th parliamentary polls under a neutral administration.
In a closed-door meeting, they also said BNP will not get benefits by forming an electoral alliance with the ‘one-man-show’ parties.
The BNP grassroots leaders, however, said the party should make efforts to bring all the opposition parties under a single platform to launch a simultaneous movement, led by BNP, with a demand for the restoration of an election-time neutral government, a party leader, who was present at the meeting, told UNB.
He said most of the leaders also urged the party high-command to take a tough stance on not joining any election under the current government and intensify diplomatic efforts to get the international community’s support in favour of their demand for a polls-time neutral government.
BNP top leaders sat with its executive committee members under Khulna, Rajshahi and Barishal divisions today (Thursday), wrapping up their planned six series of meetings with the central and grassroots leaders.
Read: BNP policymakers in another closed-door meeting
Party sources said 86 leaders participated in the meeting and 65 of them gave their opinions about how BNP should get ready for an anti-government movement and the next general election.
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, standing committee members Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, Selima Rahman and Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku were present at the meeting. Party acting chairman Tarique Rahman virtually joined it from London.
Talking to reporters after the meeting, Mirza Fakhrul said in their six meetings in two phases around 300 central and grassroots leaders talked about their organisational issues and how to ‘restore’ democracy in the country free Khaleda Zia from jail, and get rid of the current ‘authoritarian’ government.
He said they took note of the speeches of all the leaders and those will be discussed in the meeting of their standing committee to work out the next course of action. “We’ll let you know later about what programmes are taken in our meeting."
As part of their second round of series meetings, the BNP top leaders sat with the party’s executive committee members under Dhaka and Faridpur organisational divisions on Tuesday and with the leaders under Chattogram, Cumilla, Mymensingh, Sylhet and Rangpur divisions on Wednesday.
Read: BNP plans series of party central leaders’ meetings
Earlier, the BNP policymakers had three closed-door meetings with party vice-chairmen, advisory council members, joint secretaries general, organising secretaries, assistant organising secretaries and secretaries and the top leaders of the party’s different associate bodies last week. A total of 491 party leaders joined the six meetings.
The meetings were held as part of the party’s planned series of meetings with BNP rank and file to know their views about the party’s next course of action ahead of the next general election.
BNP formed a 502-member national executive committee through its sixth national council on March 19, 2016.
BNP held its last executive committee meeting at Le Meridian Hotel on February 3, 2018, just four days before Khaleda was sent to jail in a graft case.