On the morning of March 17, the Mujib-Yahya talks resumed. Today was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s 51st birthday. Bangabandhu reiterated his demand for the withdrawal of martial law and the immediate transfer of power to elected representatives.

The High Court on Sunday observed that students cannot be tortured, intimidated and pressurised, physically or mentally, as per an earlier directive of the court, and we are in full agreement with this.

The recent accident during the construction of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Line-3, which injured six workers, seem to be because of the rush to finish an already delayed project.

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman met President Yahya Khan this morning. He arrived at the President’s House in a car flying a black flag to mourn the death of those killed during the ongoing non-cooperation movement. It was an hourlong discussion.

President Yahya Khan arrived in Dhaka today. No local political leader went to the airport to meet him. All the entries of the airport were heavily guarded. Siddiq Salik, then public relations officer in the Pakistan army in Dhaka, recounts,

The rivers of Bangladesh are so crucial to its existence that they have been recognised as “living entities” or “legal persons” with their own set of rights by the High Court, and the National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) has been appointed as the legal guardian of all rivers in the country.

No sooner had the virus reached a trough than we see a spike in the number of infected cases in the country. Some countries have been so badly infected, like Italy, that they have gone into another countrywide lock down.

We warmly welcome the government’s plan to build 30,000 homes for those of our valiant freedom fighters who are insolvent, and for the families of deceased and martyred war heroes.

The UN’s decision to send a delegation to visit Bhasan Char, where the government has built a housing facility for around one lakh Rohingya refugees, is a welcome one.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, said today at a public meeting in Karachi that if power was to be transferred to the people before any constitutional settlement, as demanded by Bangabandu, it should be transferred to the Awami League in the East and the PPP in the West.

We are alarmed at the findings of a study conducted by the Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) on the situation of child marriages across the country. It has found that at least 13,886 child marriages took place in 21 districts of the country during the lockdown last year.

We heartily welcome the initiatives of two city corporations to draw immediate and long term plans to solve Dhaka’s waterlogging problem.

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s demands received wide approval in both wings of Pakistan.

The recent video of the violent beating of an eight-year-old by a madrasa teacher shows the impunity that authority figures in our educational institutions still enjoy.

The fact that the number of new coronavirus cases has been rising for a week is extremely disconcerting, particularly given that schools and colleges are scheduled to reopen on March 30, and universities soon after.

BBC today reported that Pakistan President Yahya Khan would visit Dhaka soon with a “package deal” to resolve the ongoing crisis in East Pakistan. The report also indicated a handover of power to elected representatives before the commencement of the National Assembly session.

There has been a new and concerning development with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic situation in Bangladesh.

As the bridge over Feni river (namely “Maitri Setu”) has been inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on March 9, we are very hopeful that it will create new trade opportunities for the two countries and increase inter-regional trade.

For a political party to be truly a people’s party, it’s imperative that there is fair representation of various sections of the population, including women, within the party hierarchy.

Despite repeated use of courier services by transnational syndicates to smuggle drugs through Bangladesh to a third country, the government has turned down a proposal to use the National Identity Card server to verify the identity of the product sender.