AL shuts doors to BNP, Jamaat

The ruling Awami League has closed its doors to Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami activists apparently to stop their influx into the ruling party taking refuge to avoid repression.
‘We are not going to accept any BNP or Jamaat activist into our party,’ Awami League president Sheikh Hasina, also the rpime minister, said at a press conference at her official residence Ganabhaban on Sunday.
She alleged that defectors were intensifying factional feuds within the Awami League.
Several thousand grassroots leaders and activists of BNP and Jamaat reportedly joined the Awami League to save themselves from cases filed against them and police harassment after the January, 2014 elections boycotted by all the opposition parties. In some cases, opposition activists were reportedly forced to join the ruling party.
Hasina blamed her party leaders for accepting BNP and Jamaat activists saying, ‘Leaders want to strengthen their own factions and therefore often accept these defectors…These defectors fuel infightings and often kill our activists.’
The matter hit the headlines when Kushtia district Jamaat leader joined the AL in presence of AL joint general secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif in December 2013, just before the national elections.
A release of planning ministry claimed that planning minister AHM Mustafa Kamal received about 1,000 BNP and Jamaat activists who joined the AL in Comilla.
An AL leader, however, said that he found no wrong in accepting BNP and Jamaat activists in as it would cripple the BNP and strengthen the ruling Party.
A good number of left leaders, some of them were once vocal against Awami League, joined the party and became minister and holding important positions in the Awami League.

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