Bangladesh EC's refusal to grant demanded symbol angers student-led NCP

DHAKA: Bangladesh's student-led National Citizen Party (NCP) threatens to halt elections after the Election Commission (EC) refused to allocate the symbol it demanded ahead of the February polls.

NCP, a large offshoot of Students against Discrimination (SAD), which led last year's street campaign dubbed as the July Uprising, toppling then prime minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League and installing professor Muhammad Yunus as the chief adviser.


"The commission could not show any legal logic for not allocating the 'shapla' (water lily) as our symbol and therefore we are sticking to our demand," NCP's convenor Nahid Islam was quoted as saying on Wednesday by newspapers a day after the EC revealed its decision on the issue.

Islam said NCP would give its "final reaction" once the EC takes its "formal decision".

However, the party's chief coordinator for northern Bangladesh, Sarjis Alam, threatened to halt the polls unless their demand was met.

"Since there is no legal barrier, the NCP must get the 'shapla' as its symbol; there is no other option. Unless we get it, we will see how the election is held and how someone could dream of attaining power," Alam posted on social media.

EC's senior secretary, Akhter Ahmed, on Tuesday told a media briefing that NCP would not be allotted the symbol they demanded as it is "not included in the list of electoral symbols as per the regulations".

"The 'shapla' is not on our list of 115 electoral symbols. According to the rules, political parties must choose a symbol from the approved list," he said.

The "shapla" is the national emblem of Bangladesh.

NCP chief coordinator Nasiruddin Patwary led the party delegation to the EC to get its registration earlier and said the party must be registered with the "shapla" symbol.

Asked how they would secure the symbol since it was not included in the EC's revised list, he said amendments could be made at any time.

Patwary also said the party expected to win around 150 constituencies out of 300, with nominations including former army officers, as well as women, farmers, and workers involved in the July uprising.

Several political analysts, however, speculate a bleak fate for NCP in elections, particularly after their nominees witnessed a landslide defeat in students' union elections in two major public universities - the premier Dhaka University and suburban Jahangirnagar University.

Bangladesh's largest Islamist Party, Jamaat-e-Islami-backed Islami Chhaita Shibir, won in most of the posts in both elections. Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, the student wing of former prime minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party, also witnessed an astounding defeat, though it emerged as the second biggest student group in the central students union polls in the two universities.