Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson and former prime minister Khaleda Zia has turned ‘76' on Saturday.
BNP, however, has no scheduled programme to celebrate the day, reports news agency UNB.
Instead, the party will organise doa mahfils across the country on Saturday seeking long life and early recovery of Khaleda Zia, also the wife of BNP’s founder former president Ziaur Rahman.
In a press release signed by BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Thursday urged their party’s all units, including the two Dhaka city units to organise the doa and milad mahfils at their offices seeking salvation of the departed souls of party leaders and activists died of coronavirus and other diseases and the early recovery of those suffering from the illness. But the party did not mention that it has chalked out the programmes to mark Khaleda Zia’s birthday.
“We’ve not taken any programme to celebrate our chairperson’s birthday under the current situation of the country. We have not been celebrating it for the last few years with any programme as per Madam’s (Khaleda’s) directives. We only pray for her wellbeing on the day,” BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told the news agency.
He said their party will organise doa and milad mahfils on Saturday seeking divine blessings for the welfare of Khaleda and the country so that it gets rid of corona pandemic.
Asked whether they backed off from celebrating the birthday on the National Mourning Day to avoid criticisms, he parried the question, saying Khaleda herself does not want to celebrate it under the current situation of the country.
As in previous four years, Fakhrul said the BNP had no programme to cut any cake to celebrate the birthday in the early hours of Saturday.
Amid criticisms by ruling Bangladesh Awami League leaders for celebrating her birthday on the National Mourning Day, BNP marked her 72nd and 73rd, 74th and 75th birthdays through holding doa mahfils instead of cutting any cake.
Khaleda was sent to Old Dhaka Central Jail since her conviction in Zia Orphanage Trust graft case by a lower court on 8 February 2018.
On 25 March this year, the BNP chief was released from jail for six months upon an executive order considering her age and humanitarian ground following an application by her family. The six-month tenure of the order will end on 24 September.
Meanwhile, the nation has been observing the National Mourning Day the same day commemorating the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members on 15 August 1975.
Khaleda Zia and her party used to observe 15 August as her birthday since 1991, but there are controversies about her actual date of birth and even the birth year.
Various records suggest Khaleda Zia was born in 1945, but her party claimed in 2015 that her actual birth year is 1946. She also registered her birth year 1946 in her new passport.
According to Banglapaedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica, Khaleda was born to Iskandar Majumder, a businessman, and Taiyaba Majumder in Dinajpur district in 1945.
The biodata of Khaleda Zia submitted to the parliament secretariat when she was made the opposition leader last suggests that she was born on 15 August 1945.
However, AL leaders have long been claiming that her birthday is 5 September 1945 as per her marriage certificate while 19 August 1946 as per her first passport. Khaleda herself put the date as 9 August 1944 while registering for her matriculation exams, they said.