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BNP starts member drive next week

Success of the initiative doubted

Rakib Hasnet Suman
BNP is scheduled to embark on a recruitment and membership renewal drive next week, while the rank and file is sceptical of its success.
The scepticism is sparked by confusions about who will recruit new members and renew old memberships, as the party has yet to complete formation of convening committees for its upazila, union, and ward level units.
Party Chairperson Khaleda Zia. who is also the leader of the opposition in parliament, is scheduled to inaugurate the month long drive on August 16, by renewing her own membership.
Different units of the party already collected about two lakh application forms for membership from the central office for new recruitment. while the organisation plans to distribute at least 50 lakh forms through grassroots level units before kicking off the programme, said party insiders.
According to a party standing committee decision, the programme however was supposed to start after formation of new ward level convening committees under union level units. But realisation of that plan has become uncertain, as most of the district committees failed to
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form even their upazila convening committees on time.
The centre had asked all district committees to form 31-member upazila conveningcommittees by July 15, but only a few district committees submitted new upazila committees for approval, out of over 450 upazila units.
Rizvi Ahmed, office secretary of BNP, however denied the allegations saying all committees will be formed on time. "Formation of district level committees is almost complete, and most of them also submitted upazila committees. Union and ward level committees will also be formed before the recruitment drive kicks off,” he claimed.
When his attention was drawn to the allegation that some district committees have yet to even start working as they have yet to get central approval, he said all committees started working, but in some cases some routine changes'were brought.
He hoped that the recruit-ment and membership renewal drive will be a 'new milestone' for the party, and it will start forming full-fledged committees through local councils after the drive ends on September 15.
Party insiders however said there is widespread confusion regarding whether the drive
will be carried out by existing upazila and union level committees. tenure of most of which are over, or by new convening committees which are yet to be formed, with only a week left for the recruitment drive to kick off.
While talking to The Daily Star, a number of leaders said convening committees for some city and district units are also yet to be formed. Most of the centrally approved district level convening committees also could not start their work of reorganising respective upazila units yet, as their approvals had been delayed for various reasons including internal strife.
They also said membership drive might fail at the union level as most of the union units have no committee. "It will be tough to make the drive successful at the union level, without having convening committees for those units."
But. Rizvi Ahmed, who is looking after the party's reorganising process, said they will be able to complete forming the ward level committees before starting the membership collection drive. Ward units are the lowest level units of the party.
Rizvi said their target is to recruit at least 100 new members to each unit, and the party now has about 50.000 ward units across the country.