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The state-owned Agrani Bank has recently reduced the interest rate of its deposit pension scheme from 15 to 12 per cent in breach of the contract it signed with about 13,000 subscribers to the scheme, New Age has found.
   The scheme was launched simultaneously in Agrani and three other nationalised commercialised banks in August 1983 at the insistence of the finance ministry and the Bangladesh Bank.
   On September 3, 1996 the ministry ordered the discontinuation of the scheme, asking the banks not to sign in any more subscribers and to undertake responsibilities for those who had already signed in.
   The order specified the interest rate, tenure and other regulations of the scheme, which was introduced by the state amid a public fund crisis during the autocratic regime of General HM Ershad, sources said.
   The ministry had framed the regulations for, and the 28 clauses of contracts of, the scheme, and had these enforced by the central bank through the nationalised commercial banks.
   Agrani decided to slash the interest rate in February 2006 without the approval of or any consultation with either the Bangladesh Bank or the ministry. The three other NCBs – Sonali, Janata and Rupali – have not made any such cuts.
   Both the administration and the seven-member board of directors of the bank are alleged to have been involved in making the decision, which contradicts banking regulations.
   Most of the subscribers to the scheme are not aware of the decision, as the bank management has not bothered either to inform them individually or make a public announcement, New Age has come to know.
   ‘It is a breach of contract,’ Abdur Rashid, who has subscribed to the scheme under the main branch of the bank (DPS No 6247), said when talking to New Age on Thursday. ‘The officials told me that they had no role in this and that the bank had been instructed by the Bangladesh Bank to reduce the interest rate.’
   Sheila Mondal, who signed up for the scheme with the National Press Club branch of the bank, came to know of the decision from one of her friends.
   ‘I will never ever open any account or make any deposit to the bank,’ she said when talking to New Age on Wednesday. ‘The bank has not kept its commitment.’
   AKM Anwarul Kabir, who owns a grocery at the Fakirapool market in the capital city and has subscribed to the scheme under the same branch, said he had lodged complaints with the bank’s head office and written to the Bangladesh Bank against the arbitrary decision.
   ‘I am the owner of a small shop,’ he said when talking to New Age. ‘Who would listen to me?’
   Similar was the view of Mohammed Wali Ullah, Rakaba Khatun and Rifat Rahman. They said they were poor and marginalised, and would be affected seriously by the cut.
   There are others like Nazma Anwar, a subscriber of the scheme under the Purana Paltan branch of the bank, who refused to believe that the bank had slashed the rate.
   ‘What are you talking about mister?’ she said scornfully when New Age sought her opinion about the bank’s decision. ‘It is a government-owned bank. It never cheats. I have been banking with Agrani over the past 15 years.’
   The bank’s management, however, sounded anything but concerned about the interest of these small savers.
   ‘We have done a great thing by reducing the interest rate of the scheme from 15 to 12 per cent, as it would minimise the bank’s loss,’ Syed Abu Naser Bukhtear, managing director and chief executive officer of the bank, said when talking to New Age. ‘The decision was taken in view of the bank’s ill health; we cannot count losses for an indefinite period.’
   ‘The interest on deposits and advances can be adjusted on the basis of bank-client relations, agreement and consultations,’ he said with reference to the provisions of the Banking Companies Act 1991.
   Relations, agreements and consultations with clients, however, had no place in the process, alleged the sources.
   ‘We have notified all the branches on the interest rate cut,’ Shammaleshar Bhattacharya, a deputy general manager of the bank’s head office, told New Age on Thursday. ‘The notification met the requirement of the Banking Companies Act.’
   Incidentally, not all branch managers are aware of the decision.
   Abul Kashem Shikdar, a deputy general manager and manager of the bank’s corporate branch at Purana Paltan, told New Age on Wednesday that no such decision had been taken.
   A circular on February 15 asked all the 856 branches of the bank to calculate a revised 12 per cent interest on the scheme from February 1.
   However, the 17 per cent interest on advances taken by any subscriber against his or her deposited amount under the scheme remains unchanged, according to the circular. The bank fixed the rate in 1983.
   The circular clearly mentions that the decision has been taken to increase the profitability of the bank, and in view of the country’s socio-economic situation and the current state of the bank’s income accrued from interest compared with expenditure.
   Naser could not provide a satisfactory answer when asked if the bank would have increased the DPS interest had it made profit.
   The decision to cut the DPS interest rate was approved at a meeting of the board of directors on February 2, the sources said.
   Syed Mushtaq, a director of the bank and a former secretary of the government, told New Age that the decision had been made at the diktat of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm appointed for three years in October 2004 to restructure the bank.
   ‘The PWC has to minimise the loss of the bank, as its agreement with the government contains such a provision,’ he said.
   Mushtaq agreed that the decision should have been made after an examination as to whether it contradicted the bank’s contract with the clients.
   According to the regulations of the scheme, the denominations of the monthly scheme were Tk 100, Tk 200, Tk 300, Tk 400 and Tk 500. The tenure of the scheme was fixed at 10 and 20 years.
   The compound interest rate of 15 per cent would be applicable to all kinds of denominations, once those continued until the maturity period of the saving scheme, according to the contract no-1 & 14(ka) of the DPS agreement.
   According to the regulations of the scheme, depositors stopping their schemes within six months after the start will not get any interest.
   A 10 per cent simple interest will be applicable in the case of depositors continuing their accounts for more than six months but less than one year; 14 per cent for depositors who continue their accounts for more than one year but less than three years.
   A DPS holder irrespective of monthly depositing amount can cash the full amount with compound interest at any time after the scheme is matured or the holder can opt for an alternative payment arrangement on a monthly basis (like pension), the regulations say. In such a case, pension will be provided by the bank every month equal to the tenure he or she continued the DPS (120 or 240 months).
   According to the regulations, a DPS holder of monthly Tk 100 will get Tk 26,344 after a 10-year tenure and Tk 1,32,120 after a 20-year tenure. The same method is applicable to other denominations of deposits.
   There is, however, no provision in the 28-point contract for the bank to adjust the interest rate during the contract period, whatever the situation may be.
   Like some other nationalised banks, Agrani has reduced the interest rate on its own pension scheme from time to time.
   It reduced the interest rate on the 10-year Agrani Bank Pension Scheme, introduced in 1994, from 12 per cent to 9 per cent in 2005.
   Sonali also slashed the interest rate on its pension scheme (Sonali Bank Pension Scheme).
   The contracts of these schemes have provisions that the banks can adjust the interest rate from time to time, given the condition of the country’s economy and the bank’s finances.
   Subscribers to the 20-year deposit pension scheme will bear the brunt of Agrani’s decision to cut the interest rate.
   The number of such subscribers, according to the bank’s record, stood at 12,568 in February.
   The tenure of the scheme is set to expire by 2014, bank officials said.
   The rate cut will save Agrani around Tk 41 crore, an official of the bank told New Age, quoting a rough estimation.
   A subscriber to the Tk 100 scheme will now receive Tk 1, 16,000, instead of Tk 1,32,000, when the scheme matures in 2014, he said.
   Professor Abu Ahmed, an economist and chairman of the Bangladesh Shilpa Bank, says Agrani cannot reduce the interest rate, if its agreement with the clients has no provision for periodical revisions.
   ‘Agrani has to refund the money to any subscriber and re-fix the 15 per cent interest rate in case any aggrieved party goes to court,’ he said when talking to New Age. ‘The Bangladesh Bank has to come forward to protect the interest of the depositors and uphold the spirit of the Banking Companies Act.’
   A former deputy governor of the central bank told New Age that commercial banks, including the nationalised and private ones, would follow Agrani’s suit, if the decision was not repealed and if the bank was not penalised for wrongdoing.
   According to clause 45 of the Banking Companies Act 1991 (amended), the Bangladesh Bank can direct any bank to change its decision, if the decision is detrimental to the interests of the depositors and by clause 47 of the same act, the central bank can take action against the board of directors of a bank in case any decision of the board goes against the legitimate interest of depositors.
   The Bangladesh Bank did ask Agrani to explain the reasons for the interest cut during a meeting in February.
   In March, in a letter to the central bank, a copy of which was made available to New Age, Agrani defended its decision from economic and legal points of views.
   ‘The 15 per cent interest rate against DPS in 1983 was correct as the bank rate [the interest rate which is applicable for commercial banks at the time they take loans from the Bangladesh Bank] at that period was 10.5 per cent,’ it argued. ‘The bank rate was reduced in later times along with interest rates on different deposits.’
   No DPS holders can take the decision to court as such litigation is barred by clause 30 of the Banking Companies Act, it said.
   Experts, however, believe Agrani has made incorrect interpretation of the actual spirit of the clause, which is applicable only in the case a client takes bank loans and fails to repay the amount as per the agreement.
   ‘Notwithstanding any Act for the time being in force, no transaction between a banking company and any of its debtors shall be triable by a Court on the mere ground of excessiveness of the interest rate taken by the banking company,’ reads clause 30 on the ‘jurisdiction of courts regarding interest rates’.
   Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Bank is alleged to have been reluctant to act on the issue.
   Mir Abdur Rahim, general manager of the bank inspection division of the central bank, told New Age that Agrani was yet to send an explanation.
   Muhammed Mustafa, general manager of the department of offsite supervision, said he was not aware of the issue.
   Mohammed Golam Mostafa, DGM of the bank inspection division who was present at the meeting, refused to talk with New Age.
   The central bank is supposedly hesitant to ask Agrani to revise its decision, as the bank is currently run by a foreign consulting firm. Besides, the decision seemingly has indirect support from the finance ministry, since a joint secretary of the ministry is also a director of the bank.
   Mollah Monsur, joint secretary of the ministry in question, could not be contacted despite several attempts.

The European Commission may not send observers during the next parliamentary polls if a technical experts’ team, due to visit Bangladesh next month, concludes that the prevailing atmosphere will not lead to free and fair elections.
   Revealing this at a press conference on Monday, the diplomats of the countries of the European Union reiterated their common concern over the confrontational politics and uncertainty of participatory elections in Bangladesh. They added that ‘time is running out’ with regard to holding a meaningful dialogue for reaching a consensus on holding the all important general elections.
   ‘Even if the commission’s headquarters in Brussels takes a “political decision” to send observer missions, it will already be bad news for Bangladesh,’ Ambassador Stefan Frowein, head of the delegation of the European Commission, later told New Age.
   The delegation of election experts will carry out a two-week exploratory mission in Bangladesh, some time in June, to assess the pre-election atmosphere and also to verify the ‘advisability and usefulness’ of sending observer missions, numbering around 150, during the scheduled January 2007 elections.
   ‘The people will not like to see after the elections that one side does not accept the election results,’ the British High Commissioner, Anwar Chowdhury, told the press conference, which was organised on the eve of Europe Day on May 9 to mark the beginning of the European nations’ integration.
   The diplomats did not give a direct answer when asked what would be the justification of questioning the election results a day after the voting if all the contenders for power take part in the elections under the existing rules of the game. All the defeated parties in the last three important elections termed the elections fraudulent, unfair and rigged.
   When asked if the European Union would cease its cooperation in case of unacceptable elections in Bangladesh, they conceded that it was an option but not yet relevant in the Bangladeshi context.
   However, it will largely depend on the experts’ secret reports, that will be submitted to the headquarters in Brussels on completion of next month’s reconnaissance mission, whether or not EU would send the election observer missions, said the commission’s ambassador.
   If observer missions are sent before and after the elections, the commission, maintaining coordination with other missions including the one under the auspices of the United Nations, will bring out a full-fledged document on how the ballot took place and on various other aspects of elections in Bangladesh.
   At the briefing the ambassadors, the British high commissioner and envoys representing at least 15 countries of the European Union mentioned that the observations on Bangladesh made by the ‘troika’ during its visit in January this year still remain valid.
   Having the mandate to speak on behalf of all 25 member states of the union, the troika covered a broad range of issues, including the next general elections, the state of governance, corruption, human rights, minority rights and gender-related problems.
   The European Commission’s ambassador told a questioner that the commission was ready to provide Bangladesh with support such as supplying ballot boxes. ‘But your government…the Election Commission have to ask for it; otherwise, we cannot intervene (sic),’ he said.
   Expressing frustration at the corruption in Bangladesh, the German ambassador, Frank Meyke, among others, stressed the need for overall improvement, combating corruption and holding a free and fair and election so that there can be a congenial atmosphere for investment and development.
   When asked about possible job-cuts for the non-Europeans as a result of the commission’s immigration policy, Anwar Chowdhury said the SAARC countries could create the scope for creation of new jobs under the regional grouping. He denied that the restaurant business in London, run mostly by Bangladeshi expatriates, would be affected by this.

The customs intelligence and investigation department has traced the involvement of another export-oriented company in the smuggling of 72.5 kilograms of heroin to the United Kingdom in October 2005.
   The company exploited administrative loopholes to smuggle heroin to the UK in a consignment of furniture, sources in the customs and police officials investigating the case confirmed when talking to New Age on Monday.
   HM Revenue and Customs found 67 cartons of heroin concealed in a consignment of furniture, such as counter table, almirah, locker and small table, M/s Tipu Enterprise, housed at 72 BK Das Lane, Farashganj in the capital Dhaka, had shipped to Southampton.
   The British customs authorities looked into the consignment as no one claimed it after it had reached the port on November 17.
   The consignment was marked for Prestige Tiles, owned by IA Chowdhury and housed at 3 Castalia Square in London, and shipped from the Chittagong port on Colombo EXP.V-04W37, according to port documents.
   Maritime Services Limited, housed at 3 Jahan Building, 79 Agrabad, was the shipper for Tipu Enterprise, and Masco International Limited, housed at 1724 Sheikh Mujib Road, Agrabad, was the clearing and forwarding agent.
   ‘There were 67 separate cartons hidden inside the furniture,’ said a customs official in Dhaka.
   The British high commission in Dhaka informed the Bangladesh government in late November but no initiative had been taken until Sunday when an investigation was launched by the Bangladesh Customs.
   ‘The British high commission informed us last November,’ Abdur Rashid, assistant director of the customs intelligence and investigation department told New Age.
   ‘At that time, they requested us to investigate the heroin smuggling incident,’ he said, adding that they had started the investigation on Sunday at the instruction of the director general of the department, Shah Alam.
   The government has initiated an enquiry into smuggling of three consignments of heroin on April 15.
   The investigation team, comprising officials of the Criminal Investigation Department of police, the Bangladesh Bank, the Special Branch of police and the Rapid Action Battalion, has so far arrested six persons for their suspected involvement in the case.
   They are Mainuddin and Abu Bakar Siddique Mithu of BD Foods, Nazmul Haider Bulbul, a former official of BD Foods, Kazi Zafar Reza of Rainbow International, Abul Bashar of Green Haven Enterprise and Mokhlesur Rahman, an associate of Mithu.
   The government formed the five-member investigation committee after being informed of the incident.
   Investigators say a large quantity of heroin was smuggled to the UK, concealed in consignments of betel leaf a year ago. ‘We will unearth each and every case of heroin smuggling one after the other,’ one of the investigators told New Age.
   According to a primary investigation report submitted by five government organisations in September 5, BD Foods, a leading private food company, and its sister concern King and Company manipulated the entire export process to smuggle the heroin to the UK.
   The investigation also found BD Food managing director Badrul Haider Chowdhury, also managing director of King and Company, and Nazmul Haider Bhuiyan Bulbul, who was supposedly sacked by King and Company, and Mainuddin involved in the smuggling.
   The UK customs filed a case with its London head office mentioning the three as suspected international drug smugglers

The investigation officer of the heroin smuggling case on Monday produced a former employee of King and Co, a sister concern of the BD Foods Limited, before the court for a fresh remand on completion of his third round seven-day remand.
   The investigation officer produced Nazmul Haider Bhuiyan Bulbul, also the owner of NHB Corporation, seeking a 10-day police remand, but the court granted five days for further interrogation of the accused.
   Bulbul was arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department from his Shantinagar apartment on the night of April 20, and remanded in custody four times, including the latest round of remand.
   According to the investigation committee, Bulbul confessed that he had shipped two consignments of heroin through Emdad Enterprise and Jamil Enterprise in February, 2005.
   Meanwhile, at the request of the investigation committee, the Bangladesh Bank instructed all commercial banks to submit information about all transactions by a company and three persons for their suspected involvement in heroin smuggling.
   The suspected company and persons are: MM Enterprise, at 115, Dhaka Stadium, Haji Mujibur Rahman of 9/4/C, Ring Road, Shyamoli, Mohammad Ali Hossain Munna of 23, Mahajanpur Lane, Sutrapur, and Shafiqur Rahman of Dakshin Maisundi, Narinda, Dhaka.
   The investigation committee, comprised of the Criminal Investigation Department, the Rapid Action Battalion, the Bangladesh Bank and the Special Branch of police, will receive information about 12 companies today.
   Earlier, at the request of the CID, the central bank asked its anti-money laundering department to look into the bank transactions of the 12 suspected companies to check if any money-laundering had taken place on May 3 and directed it to submit the report by May 9.
   Among the 12 companies, 10 are sister concern of the BD Foods Limited and nine of them have the same address -- 9 DIT Avenue, Motijheel, Dhaka. The companies are: BD Foods Limited, Universal Trade International, Al Ajmir Trade International, King & Company, Camellia International, Oriental Export, Greenway Traders, Famous Business International, and BD Sea Food.

Sunday’s ruling of the High Court to suspend the bidding process of the central telecom zone for two months is likely to drag the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission into another prolonged legal battle before it can open up the zone for private land-phone operators.
   Officials of the regulatory commission said that the stay order is a blow to the commission’s intention to open up the zone by July after winning a long legal battle in August last year against WorldTel, which obtained a licence in July 2001 to operate fixed phones in the capital along with the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board with four years of exclusive rights.
   ‘The commission fears that the stay order may lead to another long legal battle which will further delay the chance of the people in the zone to get land-phones,’ said a top official of commission.
   Private operators also feared that if a legal battle begins again, the delay will deprive the prospective subscribers’ access to land-phones despite the fact that the zone is responsible for 60 per cent of the total national demand and is considered the most commercially viable zone of the five zones segmented by the commission.
   The High Court on Sunday stayed for two months the bidding process for private sector-operated fixed phone licences for the Dhaka zone. The zone comprises the Dhaka metropolis, Narayanganj municipality, Gazipur, Tongi, Savar and Jinjira areas and accounts for almost 60 per cent of the demand for telephones in the country.
   A High Court bench of Justice Syed Dastagir Hossain and Justice Mamnun Rahman also issued a rule on the government and BTRC, asking them to explain within four weeks why the ‘regulatory and licensing guidelines’ of the bid, stipulated by the commission in a notice issued on March 23, would not be declared illegal. The petitioner claimed that the guidelines were arbitrary and discriminatory, as the commission explicitly and repeatedly expressed its preference for a specific type of bidder instead of favouring open competition.
   It was mentioned in the bids that those having PSTN licences for four other zones would be given the highest priority.
   The court passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed by a Supreme Court lawyer, Khandker M Shabbir, challenging the ‘regulatory and licensing guidelines’ of the bid that invited offers from local, foreign and joint-venture companies for licences of fixed telephones for the central zone.
   The bids were scheduled to be opened on Monday for issuing licences to the four successful bidders.
   Regulatory commission sources said that a total 19 firms, including a foreign one, bought applications for the licence in the central zone.
   Quoting the guidelines, the petition said, ‘Such deliberate stipulation of prejudiced criteria diminished competition of the bid, as the commission had issued nine licences to operate fixed telephones in all the four zones.’
   The guideline also says, ‘The highest marks will be given to the applicant/offerer who has built/established the longest microwave backbone network for its services. The lowest marks will be given to the shortest backbone and others will be marked accordingly.’
   It means that only four companies, who have activated their fixed telephone networks in the four zones, remain in the race for winning four licences in the central zone, said the petition.
   Commission sources said that if the commission lost the case and the court asked for re-tender, it would take more than one year to open up the zone which is expected to attract around $1 billion investment in the next five years.
   Earlier, the commission fixed Tk 12 crore as the licence acquisition fee, and the duration of the licences will initially be for a period of 20 years.

The leaders of Pani-Bidyut Sangram Committee or the committee waging a movement for water and electricity on Monday demanded a permanent solution to the problems of water and power supply in Demra and Shyampur on the outskirts of the city.
   The convenor of the committee, Muslehuddin Masun, at the press conference at Goalbari at Dhoniya, said the supply of water and electricity in the areas was still too inadequate although the army was distributing water.
   He alleged that the thugs unleashed by lawmaker Salahuddin Ahmed, were still threatening and intimidating the locals in a bid to foil the movement of the people for power and water.
   He demanded immediate implementation of their 10-point demands of the sangram committee including permanent solutions to water and electricity crisis.
   The other demands of the locals include, construction of an underpass at Shanir Akhra, step to save the locals from mosquito menace, demolition of all illegal structures on both sides of the road at Shanir Akhra, compensation to the people injured in attacks by the police and the BNP cadres and unconditional apology by the ruling party lawmaker, Salahuddin for the sufferings of the people.
   A two-month long crisis of water and power in the area caused a public outburst on Friday. Hundreds of people took to the streets and blocked traffic on Dhaka-Chittagong highway, clashed with police and ransacked about 100 vehicles to vent their anger.
   The angry demonstrators attacked Salahuddin when he asked them to leave the streets and ordered the police to open fire on them. He also slapped Demra zone assistance commissioner of police for not carrying out his order.

A much-talked-about legislation on contempt of court is not likely to be enacted within the tenure of the government of the BNP-led four-party ruling alliance.
   The government has decided to go slow after some provisions of the draft legislation, now pending with a parliamentary standing committee, were criticised by a section of the press as favouring government officials, an influential minister told New Age on Monday.
   In the face of a longstanding demand from the cross-section of society, the government decided to enact a new law on contempt of court, repealing the Contempt of Court Act 1926, which is obsolete and does not even define contempt.
   The law ministry had a series of consultations with the cross-section of society, including journalists, lawyer and judges.
   The Law Commission also recommended the enactment of the law and sent a draft bill to the government.
   The ministry later prepared the draft Contempt of Court Bill, based on the draft of the commission and the outcome of the consultations.
   While the draft bill proposed no special provisions for government officials, the cabinet on April 3 asked the ministry for further scrutiny of the bill, incorporating some provisions favouring them upon a demand raised by an influential minister, said sources in the government.
   According to the new provisions, no court will ask any government official to appear in person in a court before being given the opportunity to explain his or her position about allegations of contempt of court.
   It also says that a person will be handed a maximum six months of simple imprisonment or fined Tk 5,000 or both for contempt of court.
   Besides, the government also tabled a bill in Jatiya Sangsad proposing amendment to the Public Servants (Dismissal on Conviction) Ordinance 1985.
   According to the amendment bill, a government servant will lose his/her job upon conviction in a case, in which he/she is sentenced for imprisonment for than six months or fined Tk 10,000 at the minimum.
   The original ordinance provides that a government servant will lose his/her job if he/she is punished in a case with imprisonment for six months or with a fine of Tk 5,000.
   According to the amendment bill, no government servant will lose his/her job upon conviction for contempt of court.
   According to sources in the government, both the provisions have been made on the demand of an influential minister.
   The minister, now abroad, is inquiring regularly whether both the bills are being passed by the parliament, the sources said.
   In the face of adverse criticism for the provisions favouring government officials, the government has decided not to move the Contempt of Court Bill.
   The government will, however, move the Public Servants (Dismissal on Conviction) (Amendment) Bill in the parliament.
   The law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister, Moudud Ahmed, on Monday refused to make any comment on the issue.
   ‘As the Contempt of Court Bill is a very important bill, it needs more scrutiny and I have proposed the parliamentary standing committee to hold back the bill for more scrutiny,’ he said.
   An influential minister told New Age on condition of anonymity that the bill might not be passed by the present parliament.

Lawmakers of the main opposition Awami League on Monday accused the chief election commissioner of preparing a ‘false’ draft voter list in defiance of a High Court order and demanded that he should resign immediately.
   The lawmakers questioned the accuracy of the list by placing in the parliament some statistics and also demanded that it should be cancelled.
   Lawmakers of the ruling BNP accused the AL legislators of raising ‘unconstitutional demands’ during the ensuing debate, which lasted for about two hours.
   Suranjit Sengupta, Sheikh Fazlul Karim and Mohammad Nasim pointed out a number of inconsistencies in the list and said such a voter list would not ensure free and fair elections.
   ‘According to the list, 9.5 crore of the country’s total population of 14 crore are voters. Such a figure could only be possible in imagination,’ Suranjit said, adding that the Election Commission had no right to prepare a fresh voter list in the first place as per the existing law.
   According to the figures of the statistics bureau, the population growth rate was 1.4 per cent but the rate should be 4.4 per cent to explain the huge increase in the number of voters, he argued.
   Criticising the enrolment of a huge number of Rohingya people, leaving out a number of genuine voters, including some opposition lawmakers, Suranjit said the parliament had enough power to uphold the High Court order and to save democracy in the country.
   Selim informed the house that the new draft had excluded AL leaders Tofail Ahmed, Abdul Jalil and Mirza Azam, which could not be accepted, and called for the appointment of a new chief election commissioner upon consultations with opposition political parties.
   The commission spent Tk 97 crore to prepare a fresh voter list although the issue was pending with the court, he said, adding that the expenditure would have to be accounted for.
   Accusing the commission of including 1.75 crore false voters, Nasim said the list
   should be prepared in line
   with the four directives of the High Court, and demanded the speaker’s ruling in this regard.
   After the speeches of the AL lawmakers, BNP members Moudud Ahmed, Akbar Hossain, Shakhawat Hossain Bakul, Ebadur Rahman and Ziaul Haque Zia took the floor and accused the AL members of raising unconstitutional demands before the house.
   The law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister, Moudud Ahmed, said no responsible party could place demands for the cancellation of a voter list and removal of the chief election commissioner, as the demands contradicted the constitution.
   ‘According to articles 118 and 119, the Election Commission is authorised to prepare
   a voter lists and hold an election,’ Moudud said adding
   that the chief election commissioner was a constitutional post, which could not be removed.
   He also said the president is authorised to appoint a chief election commissioner after discussion with the prime minister and there was no necessity to hold talks with other political parties.
   He urged the political parties to go to the returning officers to correct the list and said
   the parliament had nothing to do if the High Court order was violated. Akbar Hossain differed with the statistics on the country’s population and said the figures were from 2004.
   The speaker, Jamir Uddin Sircar, in his ruling said the High Court is empowered to take action of any violation of its order.
   As there was still the option to correct the list and the parliament has nothing to do in this regard, the commission should be careful about preparing a list, he said.
   He said the parliament has not authority to remove the chief election commissioner.

The Awami League-led alliance of opposition political parties on Monday refused to have a dialogue on electoral reforms with the delegation the BNP-led four-party ruling alliance has named.
   ‘You have included [in the delegation] anti-independence elements, war criminals and people involved with extremism and communalism,’ wrote Abdul Jalil, the AL general secretary who is also the coordinator of the opposition alliance, in a letter to the BNP secretary general, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan.
   ‘It [the delegation] is not acceptable to the people. Such a delegation is not politically acceptable on the one hand and will impede fruitful discussion on the other. It will only kill time, and create unexpected debate and bitterness,’ he added.
   Jalil did not name anyone in particular in the letter, although he branded the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh secretary general, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid, and the chairman of one Islami Oikya Jote faction, Fazlul Huq Aminee as ‘war criminals’ at a news briefing on April 29.
   He did not ask the ruling alliance to propose fresh names for the delegation, either.
   After receiving the letter from Jalil, delivered to his Bailey Road official residence by a three-member team, led by the AL office secretary, Abdul Mannan Khan, Mannan Bhuiyan convened an unscheduled news briefing where he called out to the Awami League to move away from its hard-line stance on the Jamaat issue.
   ‘I am sure we will arrive at a fruitful end, if we are sincere and ready to compromise,’ he said.
   Mannan Bhuiyan, also the local government, rural development and cooperatives minister of the government, would not, however, comment on the letter. ‘Our command will have a discussion on the letter and we will then make a comment,’ he just said.
   He said Jamaat was a component of the alliance government and it was difficult to exclude the party from the dialogue process.
   In his letter, Jalil insisted that the nation had ‘expected that you will not include any such representative in the committee so as to mar the dialogue process’.
   ‘However’, he wrote, ‘the names you have proposed for the committee shattered the expectation of the nation.’
   It was a response to the April 28 letter from Mannan Bhuiyan, which named a five-member delegation of representatives from all the partners in the ruling alliance, including Jamaat and Islami Oikya Jote, ignoring a call from the Awami League to keep ‘anti-liberation forces’ out of the process by forming a bipartisan committee for the talks.
   ‘Unfortunately, we see that you did not accept the request we had made for a congenial atmosphere for the dialogue to take place in,’ Jalil wrote. ‘It appears that you are not willing to sit for the dialogue and that your only objective is to kill time.’
   On March 31, the BNP proposed a 10-member committee with five policy-level members each from the ruling and opposition parties ‘for a successful dialogue’.
   On April 6, the Awami League suggested the formation of a bipartisan committee, comprising only BNP and AL members, as it wanted ‘to make politics and election free from the influence of anti-liberation war criminals and communalism’.
   On April 12, the BNP indicated that it might not entertain the AL call for a bipartisan dialogue. ‘The dialogue is expected to be held between the four-party alliance and the 14-party alliance,’ Mannan Bhuiyan said when addressing a news briefing at his official residence after sending his third letter to Jalil.
   On April 16, the Awami League proposed a five-member panel and reiterated its plea for a bipartisan committee keeping fundamentalist parties outside and named AL presidium members Tofail Ahmed, Suranjit Sengupta, Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, Kazi Zafrullah and Abdul Jalil for the panel.
   On April 28, the BNP named the health and family welfare minister, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, and the chief whip of the parliament, Khandakar Delwar Hossain, both national standing committee members, to represent it in the delegation.
   The other members of the committee that it proposed are Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid, who is also the social welfare minister of the government, Aminee, and Mohammad Saifur Rahman, secretary general of one of the Bangladesh Jatiya Party factions.

President George W Bush said he would like to close the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay—a step urged by several US allies—but was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on how suspects held there might be tried.
   ‘Of course Guantanamo is a delicate issue for people. I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial,’ Bush said in comments to German television to be broadcast on Sunday night. The interview was recorded last week.
   Earlier, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, rejected the idea.
   Human-rights groups have accused the United States of mistreating Guantanamo detainees through cruel interrogation methods, a charge denied by the US government.
   Bush was asked by the German public television station ARD how the United States could restore its human-rights image following reports of prisoner abuse.
   ‘Our top court must still rule on whether they should go before a civil or military court,’ he said.
   ‘They will get their day in court. One can’t say that of the people that they killed. They didn’t give these people the opportunity for a fair trial.’ The US Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on whether military tribunals of foreign terrorist suspects can proceed.
   Donald Rumsfeld, however, has dismissed calls for the prison to be closed.
   ‘Every once and a while someone pops up and gets some press for saying “Oh let’s close Guantanamo Bay.” Well, if someone has a better idea, I’d like to hear it,’ Rumsfeld said in a February speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
   The United States has 480 detainees at Guantanamo and has freed or handed over to their home governments a total of 272.
   The Pentagon has said it has no interest in holding anyone longer than necessary but that it has been unable to arrange for some to return to their home countries.
   The Pentagon says the detainees come from 40 countries and the West Bank, with the largest number from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen.
   Meanwhile, George Bush said in an interview with a German newspaper on Monday that he unwittingly caused fears in the Muslim world, AFP reports.
   ‘We must understand words mean things to different people,’ Bush said in Bild, according to an English transcript released by the White House.
   ‘Sometimes my own messages send signals that I don’t mean to send, but stirs up anxieties in the Muslim world.
   ‘There needs to be more understanding between the Muslim world and the Western world. There needs to be a better understanding of the true beliefs of their respective religions.’
   Bush said however that he was convinced that most people in the world shared common, peaceful values.

The High Court on Monday summarily rejected two writ petitions challenging the validity of the election symbols of the BNP, the Awami League, the Jatiya Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami.
   A HC division bench comprising Justice M Awlad Ali and Justice Zinat Ara passed the order with observations. The grounds for rejecting the writ petitions were not made available immediately.
   Barrister Moksedul Islam along with four other lawyers filed the writ petitions challenging the use of ‘scale’ as the election symbol of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a partner of the BNP-led four-party alliance government.
   The writ petitioner challenged the validity of Jamaat’s election symbol, scale, as it is a facsimile of the Supreme Court emblem that stands for justice.
   Advocate Shahadat Hossain filed the writ petitions challenging the validity of ‘sheaf of paddy’, ‘boat’ and ‘plough’, the election symbols of three major political parties — the BNP, the Awami League and the Jatiya Party respectively.
   The petitioner challenged the use of the symbols as those are used in national institutions like the Prime Minister’s Office (sheaf of paddy), Police (prisons) – (boat) and Ansars and VDP (plough).

President George W Bush on Monday nominated general Michael Hayden to be the new CIA director, despite widespread Congress doubts about putting a military officer in charge of the civilian agency.
   Bush called on the US Senate to confirm the Air Force general promptly.
   ‘Mike knows our intelligence community from the ground up. He has been both a provider and a consumer of intelligence,’ Bush said at the White House.
   ‘He has demonstrated an ability to adapt our intelligence services to the new challenges of the war on terror,’ said the US leader, flanked by Hayden on one side and his director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, on the other.
   ‘He’s the right man to lead the CIA at this critical moment in our nation’s history.’
   In accepting the nomination, Hayden had words of praise for the two CIA directors that immediately preceded him, George Tenet and Porter Goss, who submitted his resignation to the president on Friday.
   ‘I know that I will be standing on their shoulders,’ Hayden said.
   The nomination already has proved to be a controversial one, with many in Washington expressing serious doubts about Hayden’s independence from the White House and the likelihood that he will be able to stand up to the increasingly powerful US defence department as a career military man.
   Top US Republican and Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern over the nomination, setting up a possible congressional battle over the White House. Some lawmakers were critical of Hayden’s involvement in a controversial domestic spying programme.

Responding positively to Bangladesh prime minister’s request, the emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, has assured Bangladesh of supplying petroleum products on easy terms and conditions.
   The Kuwaiti emir gave the assurance when the visiting Bangladesh prime minister, Khaleda Zia, called on him at the emir’s palace Monday morning, the last day of her two-day visit to the oil-rich Gulf state.
   The two leaders discussed the adverse impact of rising oil prices on the world market, particularly on the economies of the least developing countries.
   During the meeting, the Bangladesh prime minister urged the Kuwait government to grant Bangladesh one year credit for purchasing oil from Kuwait at a concessional price.
   Welcoming Khaleda as a sister, the emir reiterated his strong desire and commitment to build up friendly relations between the two countries in a spirit of fraternity.
   Khaleda’s visit was a reflection and indication of special relationship, he said, adding that the two countries helped each other in the hours of need.
   The Kuwati emir also expressed satisfaction over the outcome of Sunday’s bilateral talks between the Bangladesh and Kuwait.

Kuwait has agreed to lift all barriers to recruiting manpower from Bangladesh.
   The Kuwaiti prime minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, conveyed his government’s decision during official talks with the visiting Bangladesh prime minister, Khaleda Zia, at the Kuwaiti PM’s office on Sunday night.
   The Bangladesh ambassador to Kuwait, Nazrul Islam Khan, told the news agency that the Kuwaiti government decided to lift the barriers as a mark of courtesy to Khaleda.
   Kuwait is interested to recruit skilled manpower from Bangladesh, he said.
   The ambassador said the Kuwait government had assured Bangladesh of providing assistance and cooperation in all areas because of friendly and fraternal relations between the two countries.
   The Kuwaiti leaders, he said, expressed their appreciation that Bangladesh was moving ahead under the dynamic leadership of Khaleda.
   During the talks, Bangladesh and Kuwait have agreed to increase trade, commerce and business relations between the two countries.
   Both the countries have agreed to send trade and investment teams soon to identify the areas of investment, increase trade volume and tap business potentials for the benefit of the two peoples.
   About the construction of the 3rd Karnaphuli Bridge, the Kuwait side has given assurance to expedite the process of disbursement of fund from Kuwait Fund to construct the bridge.
   The bilateral meeting discussed issues of mutual interests and regional and international issues of common concern.
   Mentioning that Bangladesh and Kuwait signed a technical cooperation agreement on manpower in November 2000, the prime minister hoped that Kuwait would soon ratify the agreement as Bangladesh had already done to pave the way for enhanced recruitment from Bangladesh.
   During the talks, Khaleda said the Kuwait government could recruit more manpower from Bangladesh as it had vast resources of world class engineers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, IT experts, management consultants and skilled, semiskilled and unskilled workforce.
   She noted with happiness that over 200,000 Bangladeshi expatriates had been working in Kuwait and were contributing to the economy of both the countries.
   Mentioning lucrative investment destination, friendly atmosphere, investment potential and incentives offered by her government for foreign investors, Khaleda assured Kuwait of special preferential treatment for its investors.
   She said Bangladesh had been pursuing a private sector-driven export-led growth strategy with notable success where there were huge domestic market, abundant skilled labour, ensured supply of energy, presence of a homegrown entrepreneur class as well as the government commitment to promote win-win situation for the foreign investors.
   Bangladesh side at the talks appreciated assistance from Kuwait Fund since establishment of relations between the two countries and pointed out that some important projects are in the pipeline under the Fund. They requested continued support for implementation of those projects, particularly the 3rd Karnaphuli Bridge Project that is in an advanced stage of negotiation.
   Khaleda was scheduled to return home late Monday night concluding her two-day official visit to Kuwait at the invitation of her Kuwaiti counterpart.

The chairman of the National Board of Revenue, Khairuzzaman Chowdhury, stressed on Monday that the political parties should be audited, that the next caretaker government should have the requisite goodwill and that the Election Commission should bar corrupt people, black money holders and tax evaders from running in the next general elections.
   The revenue board alone cannot do the task of keeping a close watch on incumbent and prospective members of parliament for any aberration, as it has neither the authority nor the adequate logistics, he said during a meeting with leaders of the Nagarik (citizens) Committee at his office.
   The leaders of the committee, led by M Sayeduzzaman, a former finance minister of the government and chairman of Bank Asia, asked Khairuzzaman Chowdhury to take measures towards a ban on undeclared election expenditures, cancellation of candidature of those who are corrupt, and mandatory disclosure of wealth statement by lawmakers and public office holders.
   ‘We cannot declare anybody corrupt,’ he said in response to the proposal.
   Unless and until political parties are subjected to compulsory audit, spending of untaxed and undeclared money by political leaders cannot be stopped, he said.
   He agreed that the wealth of all public office holders should be made public.
   The revenue board can and will monitor the election expenditures by the candidates of the general elections, if the next caretaker government provides it with an additional 2,000 staffs, Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said.
   Debapriya Bhattacharya, executive director of the research organisation Centre for Policy Dialogue, proposed the formation of a coordination committee, comprising representatives from the tax department, the Election Commission and the Anti-Corruption Commission, to ensure influence of black money holders and corrupt people on the next elections.
   Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said any initiative towards the formation of such a committee should come from the Election Commission.
   The Election Commission also has to authorise any investigation by the revenue board of the wealth statements submitted by the contestants, he said.
   Laila Rahman Kabir, a former president of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and ASM Shahjahan, a former inspector general of police, were present at the meeting.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is writing to the US president, George W Bush, in an attempt to ease mounting tensions between Tehran and the West, an Iranian official said on Monday.
   Iran has been referred to the UN Security Council over fears it is building nuclear arms, a charge Iran denies. Washington says it would prefer a diplomatic solution to the crisis but warns sanctions and military strikes are options.
   Government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said a letter from Ahmadinejad to Bush would be delivered later on Monday to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests in the Islamic Republic.
   ‘In this letter, he has given an analysis of the current world situation, of the root of existing problems and of new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world,’ he told a weekly news conference.
   Ahmadinejad had said earlier in the day he would announce some ‘important news.’ It was not immediately clear whether he was flagging the letter to Bush.
   The foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said the ISNA student’s news agency the contents of Ahmadinejad’s letter would not be made public until Bush had received it.

One of Thailand’s top courts on Monday invalidated last month’s controversial snap elections and ordered fresh polls within 60 days, clearing the way for an end to months of political turmoil.
   The ruling followed unprecedented pressure from influential King Bhumibol Adulyadej for the courts to step in, after the April 2 elections failed to produce a working parliament and forced the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, to step aside.
   Jira Boonpouchjanasoonthorn, one of the 14 judges on the Constitutional Court, said a majority of the bench agreed that the election date was unfairly chosen and the arrangement of voting booths had compromised the secrecy of the ballot.
   ‘The judges have not yet set a date for new elections but it should not be more than 60 days from today. The date will be set in consultation with the Election Commission and the government,’ he told reporters.
   The complaints to the court—filed by a law lecturer and an election watchdog—had argued that the election date was set only 37 days after parliament was dissolved, which did not give opposition parties enough time to organise campaigns.
   They had also argued that the voting booths had been arranged so that passers-by could see how voters ticked their ballots.
   Thaksin’s party which won the last elections branded the ruling a victory for the opposition.
   ‘The verdict is a victory for people who did not stand in the April elections,’ said Somsak Thepsuthin, deputy leader of the Thai Rak Thai party.
   The leading opposition party, which boycotted the last polls, hailed the ruling and repeated its pledge to run in fresh elections.
   ‘We welcome the court’s decision and we will wait to see details of the ruling,’ Democrat party spokesman Ong-art Klampaiboon said.
   ‘We will certainly find candidates to run in new elections,’ he said.
   Thailand’s courts have never previously taken such a powerful stand in national politics. Until 1992 the country had long used military intervention to resolve political problems.
   But the judiciary was pushed into action two weeks ago after the king publicly castigated the nation’s top judges for failing to resolve the crisis.

Bangladesh and 17 Asian countries vie for 13 Asian-region seats in today’s election to the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council to be held in New York.
   The election to the newly established council, which will replace the 60-year old UN Commission on Human Rights, is scheduled to begin in the UN General Assembly Hall at 10:00am Bangladesh standard time.
   The member states of the United Nations will also elect 13 members from Africa, six from Eastern Europe, eight from Latin American and Caribbean region and seven from Western Europe and others.
   Fourteen African, 13 Eastern European, 11 Latin American and Caribbean and nine countries from other parts of the world are contesting for their respective quota.
   The memberships in the council have been distributed based on equitable geographic distribution.

Two more suspected criminals were killed in shootouts in Dhaka and Jhenaidah early Monday, raising the death toll from ‘crossfire’ to 545 since June 2004.
   Of them, Raju Ahmed, a criminal listed with the Kafrul police, was killed in an encounter between the Rapid Action Battalion and his accomplices while Atiar Rahman Palash, an alleged activist of underground Biplabi Communist Party, in another shootout between the police and his associates.
   The battalion said they picked up Raju alias ‘Killer’ Raju, an accused in more than half a dozen criminal cases, five of those for murder, from near Tongi College in Gazipur at about 8:00pm on Sunday.

Assailants shot dead a young man inside a shop at Rampura in Dhaka on Monday afternoon.
   The victim Dilip Kumar Barua, 30, of Mymensingh, was an employee of a public call centre at Kunjaban of East Rampura.
   The police said a band of extortionists, reportedly led by local criminal Tushar, entered the shop at about 5:30pm and asked Dilip to pay Tk 5,000 as toll.
   As he refused, the extortionists shot him and left the scene immediately.
   The victim died on the way to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the police said.

Newly appointed British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, who replaced Jack Straw in recent cabinet reshuffle, will visit Bangladesh shortly.
   Straw was scheduled to visit Dhaka on May 16, but he was stripped of the foreign secretary post and made leader of the House of Commons in last week’s cabinet reshuffle by the prime minister, Tony Blair.
   ‘We’re looking at rescheduling of the visit in three to four weeks… the new foreign secretary will visit Bangladesh,’ British high commissioner, Anwar Choudhury, told some reporters at Hotel Sheraton on Monday.
   Margaret Beckett was elevated to foreign secretary from environment secretary.
   Asked about the objectives of her visit, the high commissioner said Britain considered relations with Bangladesh very important and the foreign secretary’s visit was to enhance the deeper bilateral ties.
   Choudhury said the foreign secretary’s visit would focus on key issues of upcoming elections, governance, counter-terrorism and rising tide of extremism.
   On militancy, he said Bangladesh had made great progress in fighting against extremism and ‘we need to make sure that the progress is not hindered.’
   Asked about possibility of any top-level bilateral visit soon, the high commissioner said the possibility was there from both sides.

A band of religious bigots under the banner of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, an offshoot of the controversial party that opposed the country’s independence, on Monday called for a total Islamic revolution to establish the sovereignty of Allah.
   ‘The leaders of the state, which is based on sovereignty of the people, are corrupt and terrorists as they believe in the people’s sovereignty instead of Allah’s sovereignty,’ said the amir of the group, Mowlana Syed Humayun Kabir.
   Believing in the sovereignty of the people is the ultimate corruption and principal source of terrorism, he said at a news briefing at the National Press Club on Monday.
   Humayun Kabir claimed that the faction of Jamaat-e-Islami led by him was formed in 1972 by Mowlana Abdul Jabbar during the regime of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and wants to form an Islamic government as the people have been suffering from the oppression of the rulers who oppose Islamic ideals.
   He claimed that his party has strongholds in different districts and is working to foment an Islamic revolution. He said the activities of the Matiur Rahman Nizami-led Jamaat could not be called Islamic activities.
   Humayun said the founder amir of his organisation had formed an Islamic revolutionary council on May 29, 2001 to lead the revolution to establish the rule of Allah in His land by scrapping the notion of the people’s sovereignty, which is a most blasphemous act and an unpardonable sin.
   The council sent a letter to the then prime minister, Khaleda Zia, that issued a three-month ultimatum to declare the country an Islamic state, and formed a ‘counter-government’ as Khaleda did not reply to the letter.
   The members of the counter-government were arrested in September 2003.
   After being released from jail, Humayun Kabir termed the arrests as an attempt to repress the movement for Islamic revolution. He added that his party will continue the movement.
   Mentioning the electoral process, he said forming a government through election is not Islamic and therefore is not acceptable.

A fire broke out in the Palestinian parliament on Monday and workers evacuated the four-storey building, witnesses said.
   ‘It seems there was a huge electrical spark that ignited the fire. Nobody was hurt, although some employees had difficulty breathing,’ said Abdel-Qaher Srour, a parliamentary official.
   Black smoke briefly poured out of the top floor of the building in the West Bank city of Ramallah as workers left the complex.
   Fire crews arrived on the scene, and within minutes the smoke had stopped. Several windows of the building were broken.
   ‘There was fire in the electrical box on the first floor. The fire raced up the power lines to the fourth floor. The electricity went out and we evacuated the building,’ Parliamentary speaker Aziz Dweik said.

Two people, including a local leader of the ruling BNP, were murdered after abduction in separate incidents in Baufal under Patuakhali and Swarupkati under Pirojpur district on Monday.
   The victims were identified as Shahjahan Majhi, 65, a BNP leader and businessman of Sohagdal village in Pirojpur and Sohag, 18, of Joita village in Patuakhali district.
   The police and the victim’s family said Sohag was a construction worker in Dhaka and came to his village home just four days ago.