Pro-BNP-Jamaat government officials are mulling over a plan to float a platform to launch a non-cooperation movement to topple the Awami League-led government.
To execute the plan, a section of incumbent and former government officials, including joint secretaries, administrative officers and office assistants, held an hour-long meeting with BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia at her Gulshan office on Thursday night.
The BNP has, however, termed the news of the meeting false, fabricated, baseless and misleading.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told journalists that if any government official was found to have violated law, “legal steps will be taken against them.”
State Minister for Public Administration Ismat Ara too said the government would not take the issue lightly as it was a matter of discipline within the government service.
A senior BNP leader, seeking anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that the party was planning to wage a non-stop movement from the first week of January.
Bodies of professionals loyal to the BNP might create a platform and government officials might join to give the movement an impetus, said the leader.
Before holding the meeting with Khaleda, the government officials had held several meetings with the party’s acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and former secretary and Adviser to BNP Chairperson MA Halim.
A party source said the government officials would finalise the strategy of executing the plan after holding meetings with the BNP chairperson and then the message would be disseminated among the government officials and employees.
But as the news leaked in the media, grievances surfaced within different quarters including the party.
A Standing Committee member, seeking anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Those who attended the meeting were not from good social standing. How could officials of such level hold a meeting with Khaleda Zia? It is surprising!”
Many have already branded Thursday’s meeting as “Gulshan Conspiracy” in the manner of what is popularly known as the “Uttara Conspiracy,” in which 13 government officials had secretly met at the Uttara house of former energy adviser Mahmudur Rahman on November 24, 2006.
Sources at the BNP chairperson’s Gulshan office said former bureaucrats and officials still in service – many of whom have job tenures of only two months to 15 months while some are OSD (officer on special duty) – joined the meeting.
Maruf Kamal Khan Sohel, press secretary to the BNP chairperson, however, said some former and in-service officials met Khaleda Zia but it could not be called a meeting.
Asked if government officials can hold any meeting with the chief of a political party, Maruf said: “How was then Janatar Moncho formed? Were the service rules not violated then?”
BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir too slammed the media for broadcasting and publishing “false news.”
“This was a completely false, fabricated and motivated news aimed at misleading people. There is no basis for such news,” he said.
Meeting sources said Khaleda Zia listened to the opinions of the government officials and sought their suggestions on how to wage an anti-government movement.
Khaleda reportedly told them that whenever the BNP assumed office all problems would be fixed. She asked everyone to participate in the movement.
Party leaders hinted that the BNP was planing to bring all professionals to a single platform like the Janatar Moncho which was launched in 1996 by the then Dhaka city unit Awami League president Mohammad Hanif.
A good number of government officials led by Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir had joined the Moncho to mount pressure on the government to hold election under a non-partisan government.
Khaleda and other senior BNP leaders have alleged on different occasions that the government had politicised the administration and made meritorious and competent government officials OSDs.
They also called upon such government officials to take to the streets protesting the government’s “misrule.”
On September 16, the state minister for public administration told parliament that 138 officials were made OSDs in nine months.
