Dhaka: The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) yesterday expelled its vice-chairman, Nazmul Huda, two days after he criticised the party for calling a nationwide strike, protesting against the eviction of the party chief, Khalida Zia, from her luxury residential home.
"He [Huda] has violated the party's discipline, giving statements against the party despite repeated warning," the BNP's office secretary, Rizvi Ahmad, told a news briefing, after a meeting of the party's policy-making committee, late on Sunday night.
The committee, Rizvi said, decided to strip Huda of his primary party membership, after the BNP secretary-general, Khondker Delwar Hussain, agreed to his expulsion.
Reacting to the news, a defiant Huda dismissed his expulsion as a "violation of the party rule" and said he would go to the court to challenge the committee's decision.
"How can you give such a big punishment for speaking up?" he said.
A former minister in Zia's former BNP-led four-party coalition government and a lawyer by profession, Huda said the country-wide strike had been largely ineffective as it was called only to protest against Zia's eviction, while the "debacle" was caused because of the "mishandling" of the case by her "learned lawyers".
