Claim That 80 Jamaat-Shibir Leaders and Activists Joined NCP in Bogura; Jamaat Leader Calls It Propaganda

It has been claimed that 80 leaders and activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and Chhatra Shibir in Bogura have joined the National Citizen Party (NCP). On Friday afternoon, October 30, they were said to have joined the party with floral greetings at the district NCP office beside the Altafunnesa playground in Bogura city.

AMZ Shahriar Juhin, organising secretary of the Rajshahi division of Jatiya Chhatra Shakti, welcomed the newcomers with flowers.

Among those said to have joined the NCP are Hafez Golam Kibria, former president of Shibir's Bogura city zone and president of Jamaat's youth wing in Ward No. 3, Ahsan Habib, Asif Mahmud, Md Shaon and Minhazul Abedin.

The joiners were said to include former Shibir office-bearers, members and holders of various posts.

Hafez Golam Kibria said a total of 80 of them had joined the NCP, though only about 10 were present at the party office. The others were not present but had also joined the party, he claimed.

Golam Kibria said he joined the NCP of his own free will. He felt he could do better work by joining this party, wanted to work to take the NCP forward from the front, and wanted to move the country forward shoulder to shoulder with ordinary people.

Answering journalists' questions, he said he had been a leader of Chhatra Shibir's Bogura city branch and was also associated with Jamaat, but had now joined the NCP by his own choice.

AMZ Shahriar Juhin, assistant organising secretary of Jatiya Chhatra Shakti's Rajshahi division, said the National Citizen Party is a symbol of the hopes of students and the public. More than fifty people from various classes and professions in Bogura had joined the party, he said, and he was glad to welcome them.

Shahriar Juhin also said the NCP is working to build a new Bangladesh and establish a new political settlement. People want a new kind of politics instead of the old conventional kind, he said, and the NCP is working to realise that expectation.

Shahriar Juhin said that as the NCP-nominated candidate for Bogura Sadar upazila chairman, he is trying to reach people in different areas of the upazila. The plan is to take the party's activities to every union in Bogura district by next November together with the new leaders and activists, and gradually expand organisational activities to ward level as well.

He said that as part of the central programme, the work of forming upazila committees across the country is almost complete. In the coming days, they want to bring the NCP closer to ordinary people by expanding organisational activities to every union and ward.

On the other hand, Iqbal Hossain, publicity secretary of Bogura city Jamaat-e-Islami, said those who went to the NCP under a Jamaat-Shibir identity are not Jamaat people at all. Far from holding leadership in the youth Jamaat, they are not even activists, he said, describing the whole activity as propaganda.