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Ershad’s first death anniversary Tuesday

Monday, 13 July 2020


Jatiya Party will observe the first death anniversary of its founder HM Ershad on Tuesday.

The party has worked out elaborate programmes to mark the death anniversary with due respect.

However, all the programmes will be held maintaining social distancing and health rules due to the coronavirus pandemic, said a party press release on Monday.

As part of the programmes, Jatiya Party flag will be kept at half-mast atop all the offices of the party across the country on Tuesday, reports UNB.

Besides, Qurankhawani, milad mahfil and discussion meetings will be arranged at all the offices of the party on the occasion seeking eternal peace for Ershad’s departed soul.

Jatiya Party senior leaders, led by its chairman GM Quader, will offer fateha at the grave of Ershad in Rangpur at 10:00 am the same day. A doa-mahfil-cum discussion meeting will also be held there.

Later, GM Quader and other the party leaders will return to Dhaka and join a doa mahfil and discussion meeting at Jatiya Party’s Kakrail central office in the capital at 4:30pm.

A doa mahfil and Qurankhawani will also be held at the Jatiya Party Chairman’s Banani office.

Meanwhile, party co-chairman Syed Abu Hossain Babla will place wreaths at Ershad’s portrait on the party’s Kakrail office premises at 10:30am on behalf of GM Quader.

HM Ershad, who was ousted in 1990 after his nine years of autocratic rule, died on July 14 last year at the age of 89 while undergoing treatment at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Dhaka.

Amid political turmoil after the assassination of Ziaur Rahman by an army cabal, Ershad took over the state power from then-President Abdus Sattar on March 24, 1982, as the Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) through a bloodless coup.

He formed 'Jatiya Party' in 1986 and was elected President for a term of five years the same year through the third parliamentary election, triggering huge protests  by other political parties.

Amid a fierce combined movement by the opposition parties, he was finally forced to step down on 6 December 1990.