The BNP and like-minded opposition parties are set to enforce another nationwide blockade of road, rail and waterways for 48 hours from Sunday morning to mount pressure on the Awami League regime to quit and pave the way for the next election under a non-party neutral administration.
The blockade will begin at 6am Sunday and end at 6am Tuesday across the country.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami will also enforce a 48-hour blockade simultaneously, demanding the current government's resignation and installation of a non-party neutral administration to oversee the 12th parliamentary election.
BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi called upon the country’s people along with BNP supporters to observe the programme spontaneously to make it successful.
Vehicles of the newspapers or media, ambulances and vehicles transporting oxygen cylinders and medicines will remain out of the purview of the three-day blockade.
Apart from BNP and Jamaat, the 12-party alliance, Jatiyatabadi Samamona Jote, Ganatantra Mancha, LDP, Gonoforum and People’s Party, Gonotantrik Bam Oikya, Gono Odhikar Parishad Labour Party and NDM will also observe the blockade programme separately.
Meanwhile, a dawn-to-dusk hartal will be enforced by BNP in Chattogram on Sunday in protest against the arrest of the party’s standing committee member Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.
Md Idris Ali, office coordinator of the city unit BNP, said Chattogram metropolitan, north and south district units of BNP called for the daylong hartal protesting the arrest of Amir Khosru, also a former minister.
Ambulances, vehicles carrying newspapers, journalists and fire service will remain out of the purview of the hartal which will begin at 6am.
Earlier the opposition parties observed a day-long hartal on October 29 and a three-day blockade from October 31 to November 2 demanding their one-point demand and protesting the attacks on its October 28 rally by police.
At least three people died amid sporadic incidents of clashes, arson attacks and arrests during the hartal.
The three-day countrywide blockade was also marked by clashes and widespread incidents of torching and vandalising vehicles that left four people killed.
Meanwhile, police arrested many BNP leaders and activists, including its Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, and standing committee members Mirza Abbas and Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, following the violence centring the party’s grand rally at Nayapaltan on October 28, that left two people, including a police constable, dead.
Half an hour after the start of BNP's much-talked-about grand rally at Naya Paltan, the party's leaders and workers locked into a clash with the police at Kakrail. With the passage of time, violent clashes spread around Naya Paltan, foiling the rally halfway through.
In the wake of that political violence, the Naya Paltan central office of the BNP remained locked with the deployment of a huge number of police in the area.
