Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday instructed the home minister to look into the cases filed against Awami League workers during the "pro-democracy movement" prior to the June 1996 general elections.

Sheikh Hasina, also president of ruling Awami League, gave the instruction while presiding over a meeting of AL Parliamentary Party at the Sangasad Bhavan when a party lawmaker made a strong plea for withdrawal of "false cases" against party workers during the rule of Ershad and BNP.

After the Prime Minister's instruction, a good number of AL lawmakers were seen meeting Home Minister Rafiqul Islam at the Sangsad Bhavan office of a senior AL leader.

Mentionably, the major opposition party BNP has long been demanding withdrawal of "false cases" against party workers, lodged during the tenure of the present government.

Yesterday's hour-long ALPP meeting before the Jatiya Sangsad sitting also took stock of the latest political developments in the country against the backdrop of a renewed Opposition threat to thwart the ensuing pourashava and city corporation polls, meeting sources said.

The AL chief asked her party lawmakers to help build 'hartal-free' zones throughout the country but, specially warned against any sort of coercion, the sources said.

Hasina also warned against any intra-party bickering over candidatures in the municipal polls, reminding party deputies that local government bodies were AL's power bases for a good sail in an early general elections in 2000.

Some 20 AL legislators who spoke briefly at the ALPP meeting portrayed a "positive picture" of their respective constituencies as regards participation of people in the municipal polls. They said, contrary to BNP's much propagated claim of boycott, pro-BNP candidates are in election fever in the countryside now.

Ruling Party lawmakers also drew the party president's special attention to "wide-ranging disparities" made between MPs and ministers in allocating wheat under various rehabilitation programmes, the sources said.

Some of them spoke of frequent power failures and rise in fertiliser price during the current Boro season. One lawmaker also pointed out bank officials' "reluctance" in providing farmers with agricultural loans.

Those who spoke at the meeting include Chief Whip Abul Hasnat Abdullah, Sultan Md Mansur Ahmad, Kader Siddiqi, Anisul Haq Chowdhury, Shahjahan Khan, Fazlul Haq, Abdul Latif Biswas, Abdus Sattar, Jalaluddin Talukdar, Abdur Rouf Chowdhury and ABM Qasem.