'BNP to boycott polls if govt plots against Khaleda Zia'

The BNP will boycott the next election if the government “hatches a conspiracy” to keep its chairperson Khaleda Zia out of the polls.

The BNP standing committee came up with the decision in an emergency meeting held at Khaleda's Gulshan office last night, meeting sources said.

With the BNP chief in the chair, the meeting also decided to hold the maiden extended meeting of the party's national executive committee in the first week of next month to decide the next course of action if Khaleda was convicted in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case.

On Thursday, the Special Court-5 in Dhaka fixed February 8 to deliver the verdict in the case against Khaleda and five others.

On July 3, 2008, the ACC filed the graft case with Ramna Police Station, accusing Khaleda, her elder son Tarique Rahman, now in the UK, and four others for misappropriating over 2.10 crore that came as grants for orphans from Kuwait through a foreign bank.

Meeting sources said some standing committee members opined for showing a strong reaction if Khaleda was convicted in the case. The BNP leaders were asked to remain alert across the country centreing the verdict.

The standing committee meeting was adjourned until Monday. Khaleda will sit with top leaders of the BNP-led 20-party alliance this evening, party insiders said.

An hour after the standing committee meeting, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir at a press conference said the date for declaring verdict in the graft case had been fixed hastily as part of a government's plot and urged the people to be vocal about it.

"The entire nation has become worried and aggrieved over the fixing of date to pronounce the verdict hurriedly. We think it is part of a conspiracy to destroy democracy and foil an inclusive national election," he was briefing journalists at Khaleda's Gulshan office.

Asked whether their party policymakers worked out any action programme, he said they would unveil it once the verdict was delivered.