Home Minister warns opposition of stern actions  

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Sunday warned that action will be taken if any violence is carried out in the name of hartal, or people suffer for such activities.

He came up with the remarks while talking to reporters at the Secretariat over the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-called hartal, reports United News of Bangladesh.

“There’s no impact of BNP’s hartal, everything is normal and there’s no reason to be panicked,” he said.

Enforcing hartal just a day before the Secondary School Certificate and its equivalent examinations is a wrong decision of BNP and it has been proved that they got detached from people, said Asaduzzaman.

Asked about low voter turnout in the Dhaka city polls, the minister said, “The rate of voter turnout in local body election is usually lower than any national election. In the city, many people move from one place to another, and they don’t come to cast their votes in their polling areas. We’ve to look into the matter.”

About violence, the minister said it happens in any election but this time there was no violence during the polls and people cast their votes without any fear, he said.

BNP is enforcing a dawn-to-dusk hartal (shutdown) in the capital protesting against ‘massive vote frauds’ in the Dhaka city elections.

Kamruzzaman