Home
+
Published : 28 Jan 2014, 09:33 PM
He held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon at his Berirparh residence in Moulvibazar municipality where he said sorry for his behaviour and sought forgiveness.
In a post on his Facebook status earlier in the day, the minister had apologised first for the incident after he was severely criticised on the social networking sites.
On Monday, Mohsin Ali lit a cigarette at the function to give awards to the students of the Sylhet Border Guard Public School and College who secured GPA 5 in the last year's Junior School Certificate (JSC) and Primary School Certificate (PSC) examinations.
He was seen puffing, oblivious of the fact that smoking in public places including educational institutions was a punishable offence.
The social media were flooded immediately with remarks on Ali's smoking fiasco.
He told reporters on Tuesday, “The photo of me smoking has been published in several newspapers. I lit up the cigarette as it’s my long-time habit, but I put it out right away.”
“I am a smoker. But there is no chance of smoking in public places. I sincerely apologise and seek pardon for smoking unconsciously.”
In his Facebook status, posted at 10:35am on Tuesday, Ali had promised that such incident would never happen again.
"I am utterly embarrassed by the picture of me which has been published in several news media. I am not denying that I am a chain smoker, but smoking in public was obviously not the right thing to do," the post read.
The minister had confirmed to bdnews24.com that the status had been posted by him.
"I sincerely apologise for the incident which happened kind of unconsciously. I hope you will pardon me considering my self-realisation," he had written.
