Shahjahan Mahmood, not Iqbal Mahmood, is going to be BTRC chairman

The government has taken back the order appointing Iqbal Mahmood as the chief of BTRC within a month of issuing it.

A public administration ministry order issued on Wednesday said Engineer Shahjahan Mahmood will be the next chairman of the telecoms regulators.

Shahjahan Mahmood's job contract requires him to sever ties with every other organisation.

His contract will end on May 11, 2018.

 

Shahjahan, an expatriate Bangladeshi in the US, heads ruling Awami League’s Washington metropolitan unit. He is known there as Shah Mahmood.

 

The contract of current BTRC chief Sunil Kanti Bose will end on Oct 22.

 

On Aug 25, the government announced that Iqbal Mahmood would succeed Bose.

 

But Iqbal, a senior secretary, was not keen on his new assignment because the rank of the BTRC chairman is equal to that of a secretary, according to people close to him.

 

He, however, told bdnews24.com: “We have to follow whatever orders the government issues.”

The government created the post of ‘senior secretary’ in 2012 and elevated Iqbal Mahmood and seven others to the post.

He was in the Economic Relations Division at the time.

He was made the Asian Development Bank’s Alternate Executive Director in November that year and went on PRL last December.

The earlier order on his appointment to the BTRC, effective from Oct 23, had cancelled his PRL, but the new order restored it.

Before Bose, army officer Zia Ahmed led the telecoms regulator.

During the military-backed caretaker government’s tenure, another army officer Manjurul Alam was the chief of the commission.

Marghub Morshed and Omar Faruq, the BTRC chiefs before Alam, were secretaries.