48-hour countrywide blockade called by BNP, Jamaat underway

After the three-day countrywide blockade, another road, rail and waterways blockade for 48 hours called by BNP, Jamaat and like-minded opposition parties began across the country on Sunday (5 November). The blockade started at 6am today and will end at 6 am on Tuesday.

Traffic on the streets is comparatively thin on the first workday of the week. The number of private and public transports on the road, however, is more compared to the three-day blockade last week.

Office-goers, students and other commuters were seen going to their destinations on foot due to the shortage of public transport.

Meanwhile, miscreants set four buses on fire in Dhaka’s New Market, Elephant Road, Sayedabad, and Gulistan areas on Saturday evening, which created panic among people ahead of the 48-hour blockade.

Another bus of Anabil Paribahan was burnt by miscreants in the Signboard area in Narayanganj around 12 am. With this, miscreants have so far burnt five vehicles centering the 48-hour blockade.

Police and other law enforcement agencies have already alerted their units to increase vigilance and beef up security across the country. Police have also taken up positions and set up checkpoints at the entry points and all major locations in Dhaka.

Pausing their protest for two days, BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Thursday announced that his party would enforce a 48-hour countrywide blockade beginning from Sunday morning.

Vehicles of newspapers or media, ambulances, and vehicles transporting oxygen cylinders and medicines will remain out of the purview of the blockade.

Meanwhile, a dawn-to-dusk hartal enforced by BNP is underway in Chattogram today protesting the arrest of the party’s standing committee member Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.

Earlier the opposition parties observed a day-long hartal on October 29 and a three-day blockade from October 31 to November 2.

Police arrested several BNP leaders and activists, including its Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, and standing committee members Mirza Abbas and Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, following the violence centring the party’s grand rally at Nayapaltan on October 28, that left two people, including a police constable, dead.