Cabinet to be reconstituted, not dissolved, says cabinet secretary
All the 52 ministers of the Awami League-led grand alliance government on Monday handed over their resignation letters to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to pave the way for holding polls under “an all-party” administration. After receiving the resignation letters at a cabinet meeting, Hasina told the ministers that she would form an all-party government by November 20 to hold a free, fair and credible election.
She also said that ensuring peace for the people was her foremost concern, but she would have to continue as the prime minister to meet constitutional obligations.
Briefing newsmen after the meeting, Cabinet Secretary Muhammad Mosarraf Hossain Bhuiyan said, “The cabinet will not be dissolved. Rather it will be reconstituted with some new faces. The size of the reconstituted cabinet will be smaller than the present one.”
Bhuiyan said he will send the resignation letters to President Abdul Hamid after receiving clearance from the prime minister. “The PM has not yet said anything about the size of the new cabinet,” he added.
The cabinet secretary said there is no provision for an all-party or multi-party or interim government in the Constitution. “We will form the cabinet as usual,” he added. All the ministers will continue their work in different ministries and divisions until the official acceptance of their resignation, he added.
The Prime Minister thanked and expressed her gratitude to all of them for extending cooperation to her during the tenure of the government. She also asked her cabinet colleagues to immediately start campaigning for the parliamentary election. The ministers submitted their resignation letters without mentioning date during the cabinet meeting. The Prime Minister will decide when they would be accepted.
During the cabinet meeting, some ministers touched the feet of Sheikh Hasina seeking her blessings, sources said.
“The cabinet division will, through a circular, inform those concerned whose resignations would be accepted,” sources added.
Sheikh Hasina, at a cabinet meeting on November 4, informed her cabinet colleagues that the poll-time government will have 21 members with elected representatives and senior political leaders and the PM would head it.
Of the 21 members, 11 will be from the Awami League and the rest from other parties like the Jatiya Party (Ershad), Workers’ Party, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (Inu), Jatiya Party (Manju) and the Communist Party.
The chairman of the Jatiya Party (Manju), Anwar Hosain Manju, and the Communist Party adviser Manjurul Ahsan Khan or president Muzahidul Islam Selim are likely to be included in the poll-time government as technocrat members, a cabinet member said.
On October 28, at a cabinet meeting, Sheikh Hasina made it clear that she would form an all-party poll-time government with small political parties, if the BNP did not respond to her proposal.
-With The Independent input
