Sheikh Hasina takes oath as Bangladesh PM for third consecutive term
Dhaka, Jan 7: Sheikh Hasina was sworn in as Bangladesh's prime minister for a record fourth term on Monday after her Awami League's landslide victory in the recent elections that was marred by deadly violence and allegations of vote rigging.
President Md Abdul Hamid administered the oath of office to 71-year-old Hasina at the Bangabhaban for a record third consecutive term. Hasina was first elected prime minister in 1996 and then again in 2008 and 2014.
The president then administered the oaths for the new ministers, ministers of state and deputy ministers who will form the Cabinet.
Hasina will lead a Cabinet of 24 ministers, 19 ministers of state and three state ministers. Her Cabinet is mostly made up of new faces. Thirty-one members of the new Cabinet are first-timers.
Several veterans were dropped from the council of ministers amid speculation about the inductions as major portfolios like defence were retained by Hasina herself.
The new ministers include Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal (Home Affairs), Mohammad Hasan Mahmud (Information), AHM Mustafa Kamal (Finance), Dipu Moni (Education) and AK Abdul Momen (Foreign Affairs).
Hasina, who had included representatives from the Awami League's allied parties in the previous cabinets, has not picked any of them in her new cabinet.
Instead, the new cabinet exclusively consists of members of the Awami League.
The Jatiya Party, a key partner in the Awami League-led Grand Alliance of Hasina, has decided to occupy the opposition benches in Parliament after the main opposition BNP led by ex-premier Khaleda Zia rejected the results of the general election.
Hasina, the president of the Awami League, won the 11th parliamentary elections with a landslide victory even as the Opposition rejected the "farcical" polls marred by violence that claimed 17 lives, making it one of the deadliest polls in the country's history.
Her ruling Grand Alliance won 96 per cent of the seats contested in the election. Hasina and her alliance have dismissed the accusations of vote rigging.
Hasina was pitted against a united opposition Jatiya Oikya Front (United National Front) led by octogenarian Kamal Hossain, an Oxford-educated jurist and former foreign minister. Her arch-rival and jailed ex-premier chief Zia, who has been serving a 17-year sentence for corruption, was barred from contesting the polls.
On Thursday, she was chosen as the leader of the House for the fourth time.
Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, is termed by many as the country's iron lady.
She has been praised by her supporters for cracking down on Islamist extremists after five homegrown terrorists stormed a Dhaka cafe in 2016, killing 20 hostages, including one Indian.
She also launched trials of the powerful Islamist opposition over crimes committed during the 1971 independence war.
Her critics, however, accuse her of crushing the opposition and creating a one-party dominant political system in Bangladesh.
The Western nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have cautiously welcomed Hasina's victory but called for a probe into "credible reports" of irregularities, harassment, intimidation and violence.
"There are worrying indications that reprisals have continued to take place, notably against the political opposition, including physical attacks and ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests, harassment, disappearances and filing of criminal cases," the UN said in a statement recently.
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Estranged Nitish Kumar aide RCP Singh floats own party
Patna, Oct 31: Former Union minister RCP Singh, who had to quit his cabinet berth after falling out of favour with JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar, on Thursday floated a new party "Aap Saabki Aawaz".
Talking to reporters here on the occasion, Singh said he chose the day for the launch as besides Dipawali, it was also the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel.
Incidentally, Patel is seen as a cultural icon by the powerful OBC community Kurmi, to which both Kumar and Singh belong, and the latter profusely thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for celebrating the birth anniversary on a grand scale.
Singh, the bureaucrat-turned-politician, who did not take any question, did not speak on his relations with the JD(U), which he had once headed but left in disgrace, and the BJP, which he joined a year ago, only to remain sidelined.
He, however, made it clear that his party was looking forward to contesting the Bihar assembly polls due next year and already had prospective candidates for "140 out of 243 seats".
Singh indirectly targeted Kumar by attacking the much-touted prohibition law in the state and highlighting the deterioration in government education institutions, "a far cry from our student days when we could crack the civil services, without reservation facility and with no coaching".
Hailing from the same Nalanda district as the Bihar chief minister, Singh was an Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer, and on central deputation, he first came in contact with Kumar, then the railway minister.
After assuming power in Bihar in 2005, Kumar, who was visibly impressed with the administrative acumen of Singh, persuaded the latter to come to Bihar as his principal secretary.
In 2010, Singh took voluntary retirement and joined JD(U) which helped him enjoy two consecutive terms in the Rajya Sabha.
However, in 2021, his induction into the Narendra Modi cabinet did not go down well with Kumar, who had by then grown suspicious that his protégé was planning a sabotage.
Singh was made to step down as national president of JD(U) within months of becoming the party president, and denial of another Rajya Sabha term a year later caused him to give up the ministerial berth.
By that time JD(U) rank and file was agog with rumours that Singh was plotting a split at the BJP's instance and served with a show cause notice over allegations of financial misappropriations that caused him to quit the party.
A year later, he joined the BJP which had by that time been dumped by Kumar who chose to realign a year later.
Later, Kumar's JD(U) emerged as a crucial ally of the BJP which is now short of a majority in Lok Sabha.
