‘Affiliated, associate groups’ turning campuses into terror hubs, says Badiul Alam

He urges parties to abolish such organisations, ensure transparency and reform nominations

Educational institutions have become hubs for terror due to the activities of political parties’ affiliated and associate organisations, according to Electoral Reform Commission chief Badiul Alam Majumdar.

Speaking at the CIRDAP auditorium in Dhaka on Tuesday afternoon, he said abolishing such organisations was essential to restoring order in campuses and protecting education.

Badiul said the demand for dissolving affiliated and associate organisations was nothing new and had already been reflected in the legal framework.

In 2007, the provision was incorporated into the Representation of the People Order (RPO), which says party constitutions must not contain any clause allowing such bodies.

He, however, noted that political parties had since dropped the provision from their constitutions, yet continued similar operations under different names, such as “fraternal organisations”.

Badiul said although the original intention was to dismantle these structures, that objective remained unfulfilled, and parties now needed to act on it.

Turning to internal party democracy, he said democracy at the national level would remain elusive unless political parties practised it within.

The commission, he said, had proposed that every committee in every political party should be elected through votes cast by its members. But no initiative had yet been taken over this.

He also spoke about the need for financial transparency in political parties.

According to him, the commission recommended that all party finances -- both income and expenditure -- should go through formal banking channels. Parties must disclose where their funds are coming from and how they are being spent.

But no visible steps had been taken to ensure this either, Badiul added.

On the issue of party nominations, he said the current system needed an overhaul. The commission had proposed a process where party members would prepare a panel of potential candidates, and the central nomination board would select final nominees from that panel.

He added that political parties could no longer avoid reform. Some changes must be implemented immediately, while others should begin gradually -- but the time to start was now.