Dhaka/New Delhi, Sep 11 (PTI) The student wing of former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s BNP on Thursday boycotted polls at a major public university alleging rigging, two days after their crushing defeat at premier Dhaka University.
Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), backed by Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), announced their withdrawal from Jahangirnagar University Central Students Union (JUCSU) elections alleging rigging by Jamaat-e-Islami backed Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS).
ICS won a landslide victory in Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) on Tuesday while JCD rejected the poll results alleging that the election was “manipulated”.
ICS is the student wing of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party in the country.
Fears of violence prompted the Bangladesh Army to engage troops alongside paramilitary BGB (Border Guard Bangladesh) on and around the Jahangirnagar University campus on the outskirts of the capital despite its earlier refusal to be evolved for security in student union polls saying regular police should be enough to maintain order.
“Ballot papers and OMR (Optical Mark Reading) machines supplied by a Jamaat-linked businessman were used in the election. We repeatedly warned the administration that this would prevent a fair election, but they ignored our demands,” JCD’s general secretary candidate Tanjila Hossain Baisakhi said.
She said from the very beginning they feared the JUCSU elections to be a “staged” election and eventually the university administration “has clearly lost its neutrality”.
The university authorities were holding the JUCSU polls after a pause of 33 years while the votes were to be counted through OMR machines which identify and convert marks like filled-in bubbles into digital data for automated processing.
ISC won the landslide victory bagging nine out of 12 posts of Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) on Tuesday but the JCD rejected the result alleging the polls were manipulated.
ICS, however, drew congratulatory messages from Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islam apart from some advisers of Professor Muhammad Yunus’ interim government.
According to mainstream newspaper reports Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, however, later deleted the post on its verified Facebook page congratulating the ICS over its landslide victory in DUCSU.
The reports suggested that a post in Urdu carrying the identical message, however, still existed on the Pakistani party’s X page carrying the name and photograph of its head Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman.
The 2025 DUCSU election is set to install for the first time an Islamist student group to the university’s history since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 while the Bangladeshi Jamaat-backed group won nine of the 12 posts in the polls.
The polling at Dhaka University kept at bay Students against Discrimination (SAD) that led the last year’s street movement eventually toppling then prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League and installed Yunus as the Chief Adviser.
The SAD candidates failed to make their presence felt in the race while the group too was split in different factions with different names visibly due to in-fighting.
Hasnat Abdullah, one of top SAD leaders who is now principal coordinator of National Citizen Party (NCP) said DUCSU election results would determine Bangladesh’s political course.
Bangladesh is set for national elections in February next year.
Analysts said Hasnat’s comments resurfaced speculations that a large number of SAD activists actually were ICS operatives during the last year’s anti-government uprising.
The interim government earlier officially disbanded Awami League’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) declaring it a “terrorist organisation” in October last year.
Awami League activities too were disbanded in May this year until completion of trials of its leaders including Hasina’s on charges like crimes against humanity and corruption under an executive order.
BNP emerged as the single major party in Awami League’s apparent absence but Jamaat is assumed to have gained a strong hold in the political arena in the past one year. PTI AR RD RD RD
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