Hasina’s announcement changes BCL leadership equation

AL president and prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s announcement of limiting age for BCL activists to 28 years has created apparently a sense of despair among many of the aspirants for the top posts of the student body.

Insiders in the ruling party’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) said the top leadership of the body had expected that Sheikh Hasina would remove the “age barrier” keeping the next general elections in view.

And accordingly several senior leaders aged over 27 years collected nomination papers for the posts of student body’s president and general secretary as it is holding its 29th national council session Saturday.

The 11th parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in less than seven months time as Sheikh Hasina on a number of occasions said the next polls would be held in December next.

While inaugurating the council session at the capital’s Suhrawardy Udyan on Friday, ruling Awami League president Sheikh Hasina said, “We had fixed the age limit at 27. But as the running committee has exceeded its tenure by nine months, we can give one year grace period so that none is deprived.

“So those who are below 28 years of age will be selected [as the office bearers of BCL],” added Hasina.

Several BCL leaders said many of the aspirants submitted their CVs to the election commission formed to hold the BCL’s election with a hope that the age limit may be relaxed even further by Hasina.

But, with the announcement of the AL president, BCL leadership has been forced to devise a new equation for electing its leadership.

BCL vice president Arifur Rahman Lemon, also the chief election commissioner of the organisation’s election body, said as many as 314 leaders had submitted their CVs for the posts of president and general secretary.

He, however, did not want to disclose how many of them will be disqualified for the age limit set by the president of their mother organisation.

“We will scrutinise the names excluding those aged over 28 as per the declaration of the prime minister tonight [Friday],” Lemon added. 

Senior leaders who had submitted their CVs with age of over 28 includes vice presidents Mehedi Hasan Rony and Maksud Rana Mithu, joint secretaries Sayem Khan and Nizamul Islam Didar, DU unit president of immediate past committee Abid Al Hasan and secretary Motahar Hossain Prince, according to some BCL leaders. 

About the leadership in the BCL, AL president Hasina in her speech also asked the BCL leaders to make a consensus among them to elect its new leadership.

“I want you to reach a consensus among yourselves. You’ve to learn how to sacrifice. You will not be able to achieve anything if you cannot learn to sacrifice,” she added.

She also said a ‘subject committee’ would sit on Saturday in this regard. Party insiders said the ‘subject committee’ is usually comprised of former leaders of the student body to select the new leadership.

In the last two council sessions, BCL elected its leadership through direct vote of the councillors, but the chance of such direct vote this year is very thin as the AL president has called for a consensus to select the top leadership.

The present committee was formed in July 2015 with Saifur Rahman Shohag and SM Zakir Hossain as its president and general secretary respectively.