BNP did not participate in election anticipating defeat, says B'desh Home Minister

Dhaka: Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the main opposition party, did not participate in the parliamentary election because it knew that it would lose, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said on Sunday.

“The BNP has taken a strategy of boycotting the election with various excuses, various demands. They participated in the 2018 election and got some parliamentary seats, but this year they did not participate knowing they would be defeated,” Khan, a senior leader of tej ruling Awami League, was quoted as saying by the Dhaka Tribune newspaper.

Khan made the comments while talking to reporters after casting his vote at Monipuripara in Dhaka’s Farmgate area.

The BNP is involved in killing people and arson attacks just as they did in 2014, he alleged.

“People do not want such torture and violence. So they are coming to the polling stations in a festive mood,” he added.

Voting for the 12th parliamentary election ended on Sunday amid sporadic violence and a boycott by the main opposition party BNP and its allies.

Ahead of the elections, Hasina's government arrested thousands of rival politicians and supporters, a move which rights groups have condemned as an attempt to paralyse the Opposition.

As part of its boycott campaign, the BNP enforced intermittent transport blockades and strikes for the past three months.

Hasina, 76, has been in power since 2009 and her Awami League won the last election in December 2018.

She is set to secure a fourth consecutive term as prime minister and a fifth overall term in the one-sided election.