BD Idol

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐨𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐝 𝐀𝐳𝐚𝐳'𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐃𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐚 𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐃𝐍𝐂𝐂) 𝐀𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 So, Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan is tossing all sorts of laws to thwart Ishraque Hossain from swearing in as the Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) mayor, but do you know that he broke a bunch of rules to appoint Mohammad Azaz as the administrator (basically an unelected mayor) of Dhaka North City Corporation? As is practice, an official with the joint secretary rank from the Bangladesh Administrative Service (admin cadre) is appointed the administrator for city corporations, as reported by Manabzamin on the 7th of February. But Mr Azaz is a private individual who headed the River & Delta Research Centre, a non-profit with 11-50 employees, according to its LinkedIn page. He was also a member of the Environment and Climate Cell of Jatiya Nagorik Committee, the senior wing of Students Against Discrimination and the precursor of the National Citizen Party, then. On the 23rd of January, Asif sent in a DO letter of recommendation for Mr Azaz’s appointment to Mr Mokhles Ur Rahman, secretary of the ministry of public administration, in his capacity as the adviser to the ministry of local government, rural development and cooperatives. The city corporations fall under the jurisdiction of the LGRD ministry but it is the ministry of public administration that appoints administrators. The letter created quite the commotion among the bureaucrats in the two ministries, according to the Manabzamin report. “How can an NGO person perform the duties of an administrator? He is not a qualified person for this role,” an official of the public administration ministry told Manabzamin. By brute force, Mr Azaz was appointed the administrator on the 12th of February. Let’s see the number of ways this appointment was improper for Asif. - Curiously, 21 days after the DO letter sent by Asif, the public administration ministry issued an order warning all government employees to refrain from recommending people for appointment through DO letters or verbally. This is a violation of Government Servants (Conduct) Rules, 1979 — and applies to advisers too as they draw a government salary and hence are considered government employees. The type of lobbying that Asif did is identical to what we saw during the Awami League rule. Because the Awami League did it, such practice is kosher for the interim government? - To be fair to the public administration ministry, Mr Rahman sat on Asif’s DO letter. Seeing no movement on that, Asif went ahead and appointed Azaz through his own ministry — in a first for Bangladesh. - Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus is helming the ministry of public administration. If Yunus’s ministry did not respond to Asif’s DO letter, shouldn’t he get the message? And yet, he went ahead and did what he wanted. Isn’t this a blatant disrespect to the chief adviser? Isn’t this undermining the chief adviser’s authority? Would a minister during Sheikh Hasina’s rule dare do such a thing? - Under a political government, the position of mayor is equivalent to the rank of a minister. A security clearance is needed for such posts but in the case of Mr Azaz, none was taken. We can guess why: given Mr Azaz’s background of arrests and his involvement with the banned extremist outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir, there is a high chance he wouldn’t have passed the background checks. Yes, this IS the নয়া বন্দোবস্ত that we have been hearing of since the 5th of August, 2024.