Power cut to prevent rally broadcast: Khaleda

Khaleda Zia has complained that the power cut across Bangladesh, triggered by a collapse of the National Grid, has been engineered to stop live broadcast of her rally.

The BNP chief addressed a public rally of the 20-Party alliance at Natore on Saturday afternoon when most of the country ran without electricity. Outages struck the nation down at around 11:30am.

Factories ground to a halt while acute shortage of running water crept up in cities and towns. Emergency services like medicare suffered.

Government-run Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar ran broadcast under special arrangements but people could not turn radios and TVs on during the outage.

Referring to the disaster, Khaleda quipped, "What's the state of electricity! Power is on again, off again. People are not getting power anywhere. Power situation is too bad."

"The government cut power supply today so that our rally cannot be broadcast live."

Generators were installed at the Nawab Sirajuddoula Government College ground to power lights, fans and mikes and those shut as soon as the public meeting was over.

However, after an eight-hour-long blackout, power supply to some parts in the country including capital Dhaka started resuming around 7:30pm.

But Bangladesh breathed easier close to midnight when power was restored to almost everywhere.