Shawdesh desk:

President-elect Mohammed Shahabuddin will take oath on April 24 as the current president Abdul Hamid’s term is coming to an end on April 23.

Press secretary Joynal Abedin told UNB that preparations were being made for the swearing-in ceremony of the new president as it will be held on April 24 at 11 am in Bangabhaban.

Awami League candidate Shahabuddin was elected unopposed in the presidential election. He will be the 22nd president of Bangladesh as the successor of Abdul Hamid.

Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader proposed the name of the presidential candidate while joint general secretary Hasan Mahmud supported it.

Born in Pabna in 1949, Shahabuddin is a brave freedom fighter.

During his student life, Shahabuddin served as an activist and president of Pabna district Chhatra League and later handled the responsibility of Pabna Juba League as the president. In 1971, he was the convenor of Swadhin Bangla Chhatra Sangram Parishad of Pabna district, and also actively participated in the Liberation War.

He was imprisoned following the brutal assassination of Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. He was later appointed as the law ministry’s coordinator in the Bangabandhu assassination case.

In 1982, he joined the BCS (Judicial) Department, and in 1995, he was elected general secretary of the Judicial Service Association.

He served as the chairman of the Judicial Inquiry Commission, which investigated murders, rapes, thefts, and other crimes by BNP-Jamaat alliance’s activists and leaders following the 2001 general election.

He also worked as a district and sessions judge and retired in 2006. He was a commissioner at Anti-Corruption Commission from 2011 to 2016.

In the previous National Council of Bangladesh Awami League, he served as election commissioner.

He earned his LLB from Rajshahi University in 1975, and completed his MSc from the same institution.

Md Shahabuddin’s wife Professor Rebecca Sultana, is a former joint secretary of the government.

The current president Abdul Hamid is leaving Bangabhaban on April 24 after serving two consecutive terms.

The longest serving president in the history of Bangladesh, Hamid was the acting president after the death of Zillur Rahman in March 2013. He was elected to his first term in April 2013 and re-elected to his current second term in 2018.

Hamid was elected as a member of parliament from the Mymensingh-18 constituency as the youngest person elected in the 1970 Pakistan general election. He was elected as member of parliament for Kishoreganj-5 constituency, from Awami League, in the general elections of 1973, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2009.

For his contribution to the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, he was awarded the Independence Award in 2013.

After his term ends, Hamid may move to a house in Nikunjo in the capital, said his press secretary Joynal Abedin. However, two sources in the president’s family said that a flat in the Cantonment area was also being prepared for him.