Quader facing the heat over AL subcommittees of ex-BCL leaders

Obaidul Quader has faced the ire of a group of former Bangladesh Chhatra League leaders who say they have been left out while the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami supporters have made it to the Awami League subcommittees.

The ruling party's general secretary had to come out of a meeting at its Dhanmondi offices on Saturday evening to calm the angry former leaders by promising to meet their demand, Working Committee Member SM Kamal told bdnews24.com.

He said the party’s Rangpur divisional committee sat with Quader around 6:30pm.

The protesting ex-BCL leaders gathered at the premises of the building and shouted slogans.

When the hullabaloo reached its peak, Joint General Secretary Jahangir Kabir Nanak came out and asked why they were making such noise.

As the ex-BCL leaders spoke about their demand, Nanak went inside and came out again, with Quader.

The former BCL leaders then alleged the BNP and Jamaat supporters have been given posts in the subcommittees in exchange for money, but dedicated former leaders of the Awami League’s student front have failed to make the cut.

Quader said the party was yet to finalise the names to be added to the subcommittees as assistant secretaries.

“The lists that have been published in different ways are the cancelled ones. We will announce the names of new assistant secretaries after three months of scrutiny,” he said.

The Awami League is yet to announce the names of the assistant secretaries of its subcommittees after the formation of its central committee through its Oct 23, 2016 national council.

Recently, a list of assistant secretaries of the subcommittees went viral among the Awami League supporters on the social media.

The list has left the former BCL leaders who were not named angry.

Dominated largely by senior leaders, the subcommittees of assistant secretaries are a hope for its former student leaders to find a niche.

In the subcommittees formed after the national council before the last one, the number of assistant secretaries was 66 initially, but the party had to raise it to 467.

Quader, who was a Presidium Member at the time, was unhappy at the rise in the number of subcommittee assistant secretaries.

During a preparatory event for the national council, he had said the number had mushroomed so much that "anyone who you barge against in the party office says he's an assistant secretary. They do not say they are assistant secretaries of a subcommittee".

He had declared that the number of subcommittee assistant secretaries would be limited to 100.