Forced retirements and discriminations in promotion have further sharpened the polarization in civil bureaucracy as Bangladesh is headed for elections in less than seven months. Many officers said that the ‘polarisation’ in civil bureaucracy became evident after the government took a fresh plan to promote chosen officers at the fag end of its tenure. The government took the plan following […]

Jurists and rights activists on Tuesday were bitterly critical of the government for not dropping the cases filed against college student Limon Hossain who was shot and maimed by Rapid Action Battalion in 2011 and apprehended people would lose their minimum faith on the law enforcers if the cases were not withdrawn. They gave their reactions after the trial of […]

The Yunus Centre has demanded that the finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, should ‘clarify’ or ‘apologise’ for making ‘false’ statements on the Grameen Bank and its founding managing director Muhammad Yunus in the parliament. The centre asked for apology in a statement on Tuesday, five days after Muhith told the parliament on June 26 that Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus […]

The Kishoreganj-4 parliamentary constituency goes to polls today to fill up the seat vacated by speaker Abdul Hamid following his election as the president of the Republic on April 22. In the constituency, comprising parts of three upazilas Itna, Mithamoin and Astagram, 2,77,126 registered voters, 1,37,857 women, are expected to cast their votes at 118 polling centres to choose a […]

Saudi Arabia has extended the amnesty period by four more months for the foreign workers, including those of Bangladesh, to regularise their papers, officials here said on Tuesday. The Bangladeshi migrant workers are now allowed to regularise their residency, change their status or leave the Kingdom without prosecution within November 3, the fresh deadline of the Saudi amnesty period, they […]

At least 50 people were wounded, 10 of them with bullets, in Chhatra League infighting at Bianibazar in Sylhet on Tuesday noon. The police fired 51 rounds of rubber bullets and 10 teargas shells to disperse the activists. They also picked up eight activists during the clash. Ten who were injured with bullets were admitted to Osmani Medical College Hospital, […]

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Tuesday complained to the Election Commission that the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and her office were ‘influencing the Gazipur city polls’ and sought army deployment for free and fair polls scheduled for July 6. A two-member BNP delegation, led by the party’s standing committee member MK Anwar, met the chief election commissioner, Kazi […]

At least 30 vehicles were vandalised and crude bombs were blasted on Tuesday in the city and at places as Islami Chhatra Shibir called a countrywide dawn-to-dust general strike for today. The Jamaat-e-Islami-backed student organisation’s general secretary Abdul Jabbar, in a statement on Monday, called the general strike pressing for the release of its president Delwar Hossain and allegedly disappeared […]

The number of students in Dhaka University almost doubled to 47,800 in two decades but only three halls of residence were built in the period, increasing the number of seats to 2100. The authorities can now provide only a fourth of the students with accommodation in halls, with the number of students increasing every year. The university has in all […]

Construction of a ‘market’ on footpath by some leaders of Awami Juba League and ‘affected businessmen,’ at Bangabazar in the capital’s Gulishtan area, is about to be completed even after the Dhaka South City Corporation asked them to remove the structures in seven days. The syndicate, which claimed they had ‘allotment’ from the DSCC for construction of the ‘market’, was […]