BNP high-ups fail to solve JCD crisis:Daily Star

The BNP high-ups yesterday failed to find any solution to the infighting in Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal over formation of its new central committee. However, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia last night assigned the party's Dhaka Convening committee chief Mirza Abbas and Jubo Dal President Moazzem Hossain Alal to look into the problem. Earlier, BNP's acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and
Abbas were given the task. Party insiders told The Daily Star that Khaleda made the decision after talking with the party high-ups, including Mirza Fakhrul. Asked about the ongoing crisis, standing committee member Mirza Abbas said, "JCD is a big organisation. Such a problem can happen here." Tariqul Islam Titu, a rebel JCD leader, told The Daily Star that they came to know about the party chief asking the two senior leaders to talk with them. But no one contacted them, he added. Fakhrul and Abbas had a meeting with party's Student Affairs Secretary Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee and his assistant Sultan Salauddin Tuku at its Nayapaltan head quarters around 3:00pm yesterday. But the meeting yielded no results. Advertisement Talking to reporters after the meeting, Tuku claimed there was no infighting in JCD, but a competition has been there. Dissidents were hopeful that BNP chief Khaleda Zia would step in to solve the problem. “We talked with Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir over the phone today [yesterday]. He informed us that madam [Khaleda] will discuss our demands with us at any time. We are waiting for the call from her,” Titu told The Daily Star. A joint secretary in the last central committee of JCD, Titu said they demanded Fakhrul not to allow the new JCD leadership using the student body's office at Nayapaltan, but the new committee leaders went to the office yesterday. “If the new committee members go to the office tomorrow [today], we will also go there,” added the rebel leader. He claimed 18 leaders of the new JCD central committee, including its organising secretary Ishak Sarkar, were siding with the rebels. On Sunday, several hundred JCD men gathered in front of the Nayapaltan headquarters of BNP and staged demonstration demanding cancellation of the new JCD committee and removal of Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee and Sultan Salauddin Tuku from their posts. At one stage, the rebels clashed with supporters of the new committee, blasted cocktails, and confined BNP leaders including Fakhrul and new JCD committee members to the office for about four hours. The agitating Chhatra Dal men postponed their protest programme for a day after Fakhrul met a delegation of the dissidents and assured them of discussing their demands with Khaleda. On Sunday night, the BNP chief asked Mirza Fakhrul and Abbas to talk with the rebels. The two leaders, however, talked with the dissidents over the phone but did not sit with them. On October 14, Khaleda Zia approved a 201-member partial committee of the party's associated student body. The new committee is largely without regular students. Around 50 members of the committee have been continuing their “studentship” with MPhil and other equivalent courses. However, amid the ongoing crisis, agitation programmes at district, city and university level tomorrow, and thana, municipality and college level on Wednesday have been announced, protesting the sedition case filed against party's Senior Vice Chairman Tarique Rahman, said Nazmul Hasan, vice president of the current committee of JCD.