Bangladesh: Thousands of BNP youth members demonstrate in Dhaka
The rally, themed 'Establishing the Political Rights of the Youth', marks the climax of an eight-day campaign spanning four divisions. The procession was kickstarted by cultural performances and recitations from the Quran, as crowds began gathering in early morning hours.
Participants from Dhaka, Sylhet, Faridpur, and Mymensingh flooded the capital, parading with party flags, banners, and portraits of BNP founder and the country's former leader, President Ziaur Rahman, BNP Chairperson and former PM Khaleda Zia, and the party's Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman, reports The Daily Star.
A massive stage was erected opposite BNP's central office served as the rally's focal point, with loudspeakers installed across the area to reach the massive crowd. The mass political procession brought all traffic to a halt in the capital, as key intersections became rally points broadcasting speeches live from the stage.
'This is more than just a political programme,' said SM Jilani, President of Swechchhasebak Dal. 'It's a youth awakening. We expect over 1.5 million participants.'
BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman was set to join virtually as chief guest, alongside senior leaders including Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Abdul Moyeen Khan, Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, and Salahuddin Ahmed. His speech is expected to outline the party's roadmap for youth political empowerment.
'Young people can no longer speak freely or vote,' said JCD leader Abu Afsan Mohammad Yahiya. 'This rally transforms our silent frustration into a united voice.'
Abdul Gaffar, a Chhatra Dal activist, echoed the urgency: 'There are 3.5 crore voters aged 18 to 33. Without their right to vote, there is no democracy. We demand elections under a neutral government—and we demand it now.'
The BNP's youth rally in Dhaka underscores its demand for a non-partisan interim government, amid growing feelings of political and youth disenfranchisement. This comes in the wake of the party's growing hostilities with the Yunus administration due to its lack of an election roadmap, and many of its unfulfilled promises. UNI ANV SSP
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News18
13 hours ago
- News18
How Assam Is Fighting Back In The 1,000-Year Demographic War Against India
Last Updated: Using a 1950 law, Assam has so far cleared more than 42,000 acres of encroached land and reportedly pushed back thousands of illegal Bangladesh and Rohingya infiltrators. In perhaps the bluntest way possible for any politician, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has made Assam a test case in countering the 1,000-year demographic war against India and over 100 years of spontaneous influx and targeted takeover of his state. Using a 1950 law, the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, the state government has so far cleared more than 42,000 acres (think 32,000 international-size football grounds) of encroached land and reportedly pushed back thousands of illegal Bangladesh and Rohingya infiltrators across the border. The Sarma's government is now planning to launch another major eviction drive in Golaghat to clear approximately 3,300 acres of land in the Rengma reserve forest at Assam's Uriamghat, bordering Nagaland. These came alongside Himanta Biswa Sarma's public statement that the Muslim population in the state had surged to 40 per cent now from 12 per cent in 1951. The drive has given voice to local marginalised tribes. Thousands of them gathered in Dhemaji district, Assam, carrying fire-torches and raising slogans of 'Bangladeshis go back". Demonstrators issued a 15-day ultimatum to illegal settlers in the forest to vacate the region, warning of consequences if the demands are not met. Assam, the rest of Northeast, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Bihar have long been part of Al Qaeda and other Islamists' plan to create a greater Bangladesh and complete the green arc from sub-Saharan Africa to the Gulf to Af-Pak to central Asia, Kashmir and downwards. Rampant demographic takeover, Indian official slumber, and liberal whitewash of the threat have made things easy for the Islamists. But Sarma's counterattack should be a reminder of Assam's centuries-old glorious tradition of standing unconquered against invaders. Only after a decade of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, the world is coming to know about Lachit Barphukan, Assam's iconic commander who had defeated the Mughal army in the Battle of Saraighat on the waters of Brahmaputra in March 1671. Even before that, Qutb ud-Din Aibak, soon after conquering Delhi, had dispatched Ikhtiyar al-Din Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji on a mission to central and eastern India. 'After conquering Bihar and Bengal in 1203 AD, Khilji headed for Assam. But such was the counter-attack by the Kamrup (Assam) king Viswasundardeva that Bakhtiyar Khilji somehow managed to get back to Bengal after his entire army was literally wiped out on the banks of the Brahmaputra. The Kamrup king's victory over the first-ever Muslim invaders of Assam has been recorded in a rock inscription at Kanai-Barasi-Bowa near Guwahati," writes veteran journalist Samudra Gupta Kashyap, who has recently authored a book titled, Assam's Great Heroes Who Fought the Muslim Invasions. It also mentions the heroism of kings and chiefs like Indra Narayan, Chakradhwaj, Nilambar, Chilarai, Indrapratap Narayan, Parikshit, Sonatan, Balinarayan, Madhusudan, Parasuram, Jadu Nayak, Susengpha, Momai-Tamuli Barbarua, Tangchu Sandikui and several others who had vanquished invaders who had superior firepower. Today, Sarma claims that land more than the area of Chandigarh has been freed from encroachers in Assam, and much more action is coming up. Assam could be the test case for the rest of Bharat, especially West Bengal, where demographic change encouraged by the ruling TMC could some day bring the state to the brink of a third, bloody Partition. Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
The Print
15 hours ago
- The Print
No other city is like Gurugram—'so mismanaged, yet so highly spoken of'
And now, this impressive exercise has resulted in the detention of a grand total of 10 people, alleged to be Bangladeshis. Ten people in a city of over two million. A city-wide operation which paralysed essential services and disrupted thousands of livelihoods, in service of a problem that barely exists outside of election years. The crackdown itself hinges on absurd, manufactured hysteria. In recent days, over 250 suspected 'illegal immigrants' have been herded into holding areas for document verification. Bengali-speaking workers, even those with proper documentation like Aadhaar and PAN cards, are being harassed by police demanding more proof. In some cases, in the absence of the father's birth certificate, the authorities have demanded the grandfather's papers. The dragnet has terrorised an entire workforce into underground hiding or outright flight. For days now, Gurugram's society WhatsApp groups and Reddit forums have buzzed with a slow-rising panic. The domestic workers have vanished. The cooks, the nannies, the food delivery executives, the sanitation workers—the invisible army that keeps Gurugram functioning—have fled in terror of the crackdown on 'illegal' Bangladeshi immigrants. As kitchen countertops remain dirty and impromptu garbage dumps appear on abandoned plots, the city's residents are discovering what their gleaming towers are actually worth, in the absence of the people who have summarily been branded as threats. An impossible tenuousness defines working-class existence in Gurugram. Women who spend their days scrubbing marble floors in sprawling condominiums return to cramped hutments that could be vapourised overnight without warning. Often built on contested land, these 'unauthorised' settlements are tolerated only as long as they are convenient. Anandita Kakkar, a leader for marketing, Asia and resident of Gurugram since the late 1990s, told me that several domestic workers complain about the system of exploitation in their quarters. Local landlords construct these structures, and then force tenants to buy their daily groceries at inflated prices from designated shops. Anyone who tries to question this system faces eviction. The safety of young girls and women is a source of persistent fear for local communities. Kakkar said that adolescent girls are often sent back to their villages, while older ones work punishing 12-hour shifts, in the belief that longer hours in employer homes might offer protection from the dangers lurking in their own neighbourhoods. But here's the thing about Gurugram. The entire city lives in a state of precarity, just at different price points. Gurugram has a problem of structural abandonment, whether you're a domestic worker speaking an alien language, or the much-celebrated CEO of whatever hot startup is currently keeping the pink papers busy. Floodwaters and sanitation issues don't discriminate, whether your home is an unlit tenement in an unauthorised colony, or a Rs 100-crore apartment in India's toniest gated complex. Also read: Gurugram or Kudagram? Elites are furious over the garbage emergency Not ready for Disneyland The city's news cycle follows a predictable seasonal calendar of crises: monsoon floods, festival traffic snarls, summer power cuts, winter pollution, year-round waste management failures. Yet real estate prices, spurred on by dangerous speculation (they have risen three times since 2021), continue their relentless climb in the face of complete civic breakdown. Meanwhile, as the Chief Minister announced plans for a Disneyland, eight people died in 24 hours during recent rains from electrocution, drowning, and accidents. Writer and poet Manik Sharma moved to Gurugram only a year ago, and already fantasises about leaving the city. Sharma has lived in metros all around the country, but told me that he has yet to encounter a place that is 'so mismanaged, yet so highly spoken of'. In the last few weeks in Sector 56, where Sharma resides, sewage was overflowing everywhere. 'They used to say in my village that during an election, all broken roads get fixed. That does not hold true for Gurugram, where assembly and municipal elections have come and gone,' he said. 'You'd be hard pressed to find public hospitals and functioning public toilets. I can't understand how working women who don't own cars navigate the city.' Sharma suggested that while plenty of Indian cities grapple with traffic, the condition of Gurugram's infrastructure is the absolute worst he has witnessed. All while the city's real estate lobby continues to sing a different tune. 'Gurugram's real estate PR does its own PR,' Sharma said, pointing to the giddy conversations around the prices and how that guides perceptions about the city. 'What anchors this city, other than the price of a DLF Camellias apartment, thekas at every corner, fancy cars, and a SonyLIV show? My respect for Noida has grown tenfold,' Sharma added. Also read: What makes Gurugram's Camellias India's most exclusive pin code? It's not just about money Built on wasteland narrative This shared precarity is the inevitable outcome of a city designed around extraction—you only have to look at its foundational mythology to understand it. In the 1980s, KP Singh of DLF India pioneered the template for India's private city-making. In Planning the Millennium City: The Politics of Place-Making in Gurgaon, India (2019), Shoshana Ruth Goldstein writes: 'To assemble the roughly 3,500 acres he initially planned for his group housing projects, Singh and his associates dealt with nearly 700 families. His pitch involved harnessing the wasteland narrative, convincing farmers that their land was underproductive. If they sold to him, he would arrange for them to get a larger plot further out in the District or in Rajasthan with a better agricultural yield.' Singh, along with Sushil Ansal of Ansals, and Ramesh Chandra of Unitech—two of Gurugram's largest builders—lobbied for extensive changes to town planning laws. In his memoir Whatever the Odds: The Incredible Story Behind DLF (2011), Singh wrote about convincing holders of small land parcels to sell their assets to DLF, and also become 'angel investors' in the company. 'I used to dress in a kurta pyjama, wrap a shawl around my shoulders, and wear a beret on my head. I would squat on the floor of their huts and drink the refreshment they offered. I even shared a few puffs of smoke from their hookahs as it would have been impolite to refuse,' he writes. Several of these deals would go on to sour, but that scarcely made a dent in DLF's profits. The same logic that convinced farmers their fertile land was worthless, now convinces residents that paying Rs 100 crore for flood-prone apartments represents progress. Left in the lurch are upper-middle-class residents like Kakkar, who has witnessed the several facelifts that her city has undergone—from wheat fields to elevated metro lines, from abundant water supply to having to rely on water tankers full of worms. When her family first moved to then Gurgaon, the running joke was that one side of the highway, where the DLF properties were, was the 'gur' (sweetness) and the other side (Udyog Vihar's manufacturing units) was the 'gaon' (village). All that changed with the arrival of global firms, like Microsoft, Google, and the building of Cyber City. Gurugram had plenty of opportunities to fashion itself in the image of, say, Chandigarh, but they've all flown by. Kakkar said the city suffers from a lack of vision. 'I wonder if it's because there are too many builders in the area, or that Gurugram's municipal authorities are just not bothered or cannot foresee the next crisis. The city is surviving on a wing and a prayer,' she told me. Still, some of the optimism of the early days continues to abide. Kakkar said Gurugram offered millions of people from smaller towns in North India the chance to be upwardly mobile and to rewrite the course of their lives. 'People who moved here came with massive aspirations and Gurugram became the gateway to many other opportunities,' she said. 'Things have gotten worse, but they have also gotten better for so many. That too, is Gurugram.' Perhaps that's one of the promises Gurugram has actually kept: That people will find ways to survive even systemic abandonment. If you can endure Gurugram's dysfunction, you can probably endure anything. Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)
The Print
21 hours ago
- The Print
Vocal elsewhere but silent in Tripura, BJP in a bind over ally TIPRA Motha's demand for SIR
'We earnestly urge the Election Commission of India to initiate a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Tripura, accompanied by a comprehensive door-to-door verification exercise, similar to the model recently adopted in the State of Bihar. Tripura shares an 856-kilometre-long international border with Bangladesh, much of which remains porous and inadequately fenced, posing serious challenges in monitoring and preventing illegal immigration,' stated Motha's written submission to the CEC. New Delhi: The ruling BJP in Tripura has been put on the back foot, with its ally Tipra Motha raising the pitch for a Special Intensive Revision (SIR)—similar to the one conducted in Bihar—in a state that houses a large population of Bengali Hindus with roots in present-day Bangladesh and shares an 856-km border with it. It added: 'The unchecked influx of undocumented immigrants has not only disrupted the socio-economic balance of the region but has also led to the dilution of electoral rolls, threatening the democratic rights of the indigenous tribal communities and undermining electoral fairness.' Tripura BJP president Rajib Bhattacharjee said the party has not yet formulated its position on the demand for an SIR in the state. 'We have not made a decision yet. We will soon have a meeting of the state BJP unit to devise our position on the issue,' said Bhattacharjee, who is also the Northeastern state's Rajya Sabha MP. He added that the state government is carrying out drives in accordance with directions from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to identify and deport 'illegal migrants'. At the national level the BJP is defending the SIR—an agenda aligned with its broader narrative of expelling Rohingyas and Bangladeshis who have entered India illegally. However, in Tripura, where Bengali Hindus with roots in erstwhile East Pakistan account for nearly 70 percent of the population, the party has to strike a more nuanced tone. Even in Assam, where the BJP is also in power, the state government is walking a tightrope, demanding that ECI consider the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which has already been carried out in the state, as an admissible document under the SIR. But it is in Tripura, which saw waves of Bengali Hindu families fleeing religious persecution in erstwhile East Pakistan during partition and the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh, where the BJP is struggling to craft a response to the demand of its own ally for an SIR. The BJP draws its support primarily from Bengali Hindus of the state, whereas the politics of Tipra Motha is founded entirely on the demographic changes and anxieties triggered by waves of migration, which have reduced Tripura's indigenous population to an ethnic minority. The Motha has 13 legislators in the state's 60-member Assembly, while the BJP has 32—barely above the halfway mark. When contacted, Tipra Motha founder Pradyot Debbarman told ThePrint, 'Why is the BJP silent on our demand for an SIR in Tripura? They already have the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to protect the rights of Bengali Hindus, with 31 December 2014 as the cut-off date. They should just notify the CAA rules.' The flashpoint on SIR has come at a time when ties between BJP and the Motha have already come under strain in recent months over Debbarman's suggestion that his party will not hesitate to pull out of the ruling alliance if the Centre does not implement the tripartite agreement signed last year to address tribal grievances in the state. The Centre, Tripura government and Tipra Motha were parties to the agreement, which has made no headway in terms of implementation since its signing, in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah, on 2 March 2024. 'We are part of the government for the accord, but if it is not materialised, we will have to think about how long this arrangement can continue,' he said. Even on Sunday, the BJP alleged that Motha supporters attacked its workers who had gathered to listen to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Mann Ki Baat at a village. Bhattacharjee said one person has been arrested in connection with the attack, which left nine BJP workers injured. 'Whoever was involved in the attack will not be spared. We will also see who stands with the perpetrators of the violence. That will be revealing in itself,' Bhattacharjee said. Debbarman, however, claimed that the clash was essentially between a group of people who were formerly with the CPI(M) and switched over to the BJP later and current Left supporters. Debbarman claimed that the ECI, including Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, who was present in the meeting, assured the Tipra Motha delegation that an SIR will be carried out across the country, including in Tripura. He said the Tripura government should form a panel like the one constituted in Meghalaya to ensure that 'illegal migrants' being evicted from Assam under the ongoing drives do not cross over and take shelter. 'We cannot allow illegal immigration anymore in Tripura or the Northeast. We don't need permission from anyone to do so. This is about the rights of our people. If needed, we will approach the Supreme Court. The mistakes allowed to happen in the 50s, 60s, 90s cannot be repeated in 2025. We will form a committee in autonomous council areas we govern to detect and send back illegal immigrants,' Debbarman said. (Edited by Malavalli Kishan Shashank) Also Read: Bihar mimics 19th-century American South. Citizenship is now weaponised to exclude voters
