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Before the Maghrib prayer break during the supplementary budget discussions in the House, MP Shafiqul made the allegations.

After the break, Chief Whip Nurul Islam Moni requested Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad to allow the minister to respond.

The Bogura-2 MP then denied the allegations, saying the names were chosen by the deputy commissioner based on geography: Syedpur union was adjacent to the border and has therefore been named Simanta, while Deuli union was located farther away and has therefore been named Diganta. He insisted it “miraculously” matched the names of his sons. “If I had wanted to, I could have asked the DC to name them Mir Simanta or Mir Diganta. However, the prefix Mir is not included.”

The state minister humorously said, “Allah saved me that the honourable member did not claim BGB’s Simanta Bank is mine, or that the Simanta Express train from Khulna to Parbatipur belongs to me, or that Diganta Tower in Gulshan-1 or Diganta TV are mine.”

CRITICISM

Locals and social media users have claimed that the state minister used his influence to create three new union parishads and name them after his family name and his two sons.

A resident of Kichak union, requesting anonymity, told The Daily Star that the old Kichak Union Parishad office was the closest to his home.

“Now my village has been separated from that union and included in the new Mirbari union. This will certainly increase the distance I have to travel to reach the union office.

“There is a plaque at State Minister Mir Shahe Alam’s residence that reads Mirbari. If a new union is named after a family home, it is reasonable for people to question the logic behind the decision.”

Criticising the move, a Facebook user wrote, “State Minister for Local Government Mir Shahe Alam has become the new landlord of Bogura. He has named three unions after his family name and his two sons.”

Asked how the union parishads came to be named in a way that matched the minister’s family name and the names of his two sons, Bogura DC Toufikur Rahman told this newspaper that the names were proposed by an upazila committee. “If all the information is found to be correct, we finalise the names.”

“It is not for us to examine whose name appeared in the recommendations or how it got there. Besides, I am not supposed to know who has what name.”

Shibganj UNO Ziaur Rahman told The Daily Star, “I don’t know how the names matched the state minister’s family name and his son’s names.”

He added that they had sought opinions from locals before sending the proposals. Most of them suggested these names. “We recommended the names based on that.”