Shawdesh Desk:

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has decided to form six shadow reform committees to place proposals to six reform commissions constituted earlier by the interim government.

The party’s highest policy-making forum, the standing committee, took the decision at a meeting chaired by the party acting chairman Tarique Rahman virtually Monday night, a member of the party’s standing committee told New Age on Wednesday.

‘The committees will work as shadow reform commissions and it would place specific proposals to the government’s reform commissions,’ he said.

He said that people having expertise in specific sectors would be members of their respective committees and each of the committees might be headed by one of the party’s standing committee members.

The chief advisor to the interim government, Professor Muhammad Yunus, in his address to the nation on September 11, had announced the formation of six commissions for reforms in the electoral system, police, judiciary, public administration, constitution, and Anti-Corruption Commission.

He had said that Badiul Alam Majumder would head the electoral system reform commission, Safar Raz Hossain would lead the police reform commission, Justice Shah Abu Naeem Mominur Rahman would head the judiciary reform commission, Iftekharuzzaman would lead the Anti-Corruption Commission reform commission, Abdul Mueed Chowdhury would head the public administration reform commission, and lawyer Shahdeen Malik would lead the Constitution Reform Commission.

The head of the Constitution Reform Commission was later replaced with professor Ali Riaz.

The BNP standing committee member said that the BNP’s committees would place their suggestions and recommendations to the government directly or through the reform commissions.

Another BNP standing committee member said that party leaders also discussed the ongoing situation in the country, important institutional reforms, and the upcoming national election.

He said that they, in their discussions, tried to understand the direction the country was following.

Apart from this, he said, the party’s policy-making leaders had many questions about the reform activities of the interim government.

He, referring to the questions of the standing committee members, wanted to know how the interim government would make the reforms, why the roadmap for reforms was not given, and when the reforms would take place.

The BNP leader wanted to know the reasons for not arresting important people of the ousted Sheikh Hasina regime and the Awami League leaders who were involved in committing atrocities during the July mass uprising.

BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Jamiruddin Sircar, Mirza Abbas, Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, Abdul Moyeen Khan, Nazrul Islam Khan, Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, Salauddin Ahmed, Selima Rahman, Iqbal Hasan Mahmud, Hafiz Uddin Ahmed and AZM Zahid Hossain were present in the meeting.