Just like last month’s municipality elections, the Awami League has decided to hold the upcoming chairman elections to the union councils in party lines as well.
The decision was made in a meeting of the party’s central working committee yesterday chaired Prime Minister and party chief Sheikh Hasina at her Ganabhaban residence, sources said.
The meeting also reportedly decided that stern actions would be taken if any union council-level leaders of the party become “rebel” by going against the high command’s decision and if any ministers or lawmakers back the renegades.
The Jatiya Sangshad amended the relevant law to make last month’s polls to the municipalities a partisan affair. Municipalities and union councils are the second lowest and the lowest tiers of local government system in Bangladesh respectively. The tentative date for the union council polls is March.
Yesterday’s meeting of the Awami League Central Working Committee (ALCWC) also decided that the party’s triennial national council will be held on March 28.
After the meeting, the party’s General Secretary and Public Administration Minister Syed Ashraful Islam said that the council programme would be held at the historic Suhrawardy Udyan.
According to sources, PM Sheikh Hasina was supposed to discuss a tenure extension for the party’s central working committee and the sub-committees. However, in the end, no decisions in this regard have been made.
The meeting also gave the responsibility of forming the sub-committees to Syed Ashraful Islam.
The last and the 19th National Council of the Awami League, held on December 29, 2012, re-elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as the president and Syed Ashraful Islam as the General Secretary.
According to party insiders, chances are high that the top two posts of the party will not see any changes this year either.
After the central committee’s tenure expired on December 29, 2015 as per party charter, it got an extension until March as the national council could not he held because of the municipality polls.