Staff correspondent
Lawmakers of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led opposition continued to remain absent in the parliamentary sessions for the fourth day because there has been no solution to the stalemate on the seating arrangement till Tuesday.
They could not decide on Tuesday whether to return to parliament for the current session as the leader of the opposition, Khaleda Zia, did not join the meeting of the opposition lawmakers on security grounds.
‘We will not join the session today [Tuesday] as the speaker is yet to respond positively to our demand to return our front-row seats,’ the opposition chief whip, Jainal Abedin Faruk, told reporters after a meeting of the lawmakers of BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh Jatiya Party on Tuesday evening at the leader of the opposition’s conference room in the parliament. ‘We will continue waiting for a positive initiative to resolve the row over seats.’
When asked whether the opposition MPs were scheduled to hold a meeting in the presence of Khaleda Zia, Faruk said, ‘She could not attend the meeting on security grounds as the government has withdrawn the Special Security Force that was sent to protect her by the interim government.’
The government withdrew the Special Security Force that was ordered by the caretaker government to ensure her security during the elections at midnight on Monday.
The opposition lawmakers did not return to the parliament after staging a walk-out on January 28 in protest against the new seating arrangement which gave eight instead of 21 seats in the first two rows on the left of the speaker to the opposition.
The parliament held six sittings on January 25, 28, 29 and February 1, 2 and 3.
When asked about speaker Abdul Hamid’s assurance of settling the dispute over seat allocation before the next session, Faruk said the opposition lawmakers were not satisfied with his statement.
He said the speaker and the treasury bench are yet to include senior opposition lawmaker Salauddin Quader Chowdhury in the special committee on parliamentary activities. ‘They cannot change the decision of the leader of the opposition without consulting her,’ he said.
At the request of the ruling party’s chief whip, the opposition chief whip, in consultation with the leader of the opposition, sent two names— Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and MK Anwar— to represent the opposition in the special committee on parliamentary activities. ‘But they [ruling party] dropped Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and included me in the list without my consent,’ said Faruk. ‘It is embarrassing for me.’
The speaker changed the seating arrangement laid out by his predecessor Jamiruddin Sircar who had given the main opposition lawmakers nine seats in the front row and 12 in the second row, ignoring the treasury bench’s proposal.
An opposition delegation had a meeting with the speaker on January 29 and demanded three seats in addition to the four seats allocated in the front row. They asked the speaker to inform them of his decision by Sunday.
In the 2001 parliament, when BNP was in power, all the ten seats in the front row to the left of the speaker were allocated to opposition lawmakers — eight for the Awami League and two for Jatiya Party factions.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
