Tarique Rahman to contest Bangladesh polls from seat once held by Khaleda Zia

Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of the Bangladesh ist Party (BNP) and son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who returned to Dhaka last week after a 17-year exile, will contest the upcoming general elections from two constituencies - Dhaka-17 and Bogra-6. He applied for voting rights on December 27, two days after his return, and also signed the nomination papers for Dhaka-17 earlier in the day.

Dhaka-17 was previously held by senior Awami League leader Mohammad A. Arafat, who served as Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting in Sheikh Hasina’s government. A vocal critic of the BNP–Jamaat alliance, Arafat lost both his parliamentary seat and ministerial position following the Hasina’s ouster.

On August 12, 2024, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit ordered all banks to freeze the accounts of Arafat and his wife. Multiple cases have since been filed against Arafat, including those related to protests that resulted in fatalities.

Meanwhile, the Bogra-6 constituency, once considered a stronghold of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, had been taken by Awami League's Ragebul Ahsan Ripu in the 2023 by-elections.

Barely six months after the fall of the Hasina government, Ripu was arrested by Bangladesh’s anti-terror agency, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Ripu was among those targeted in Muhammad Yunus’s crackdown on Awami League members soon after Hasina fled to India.

Following his arrest, the RAB said Ripu was accused in 13 cases, including murder, across various police stations in Bogra district. While in jail, Ripu suffered a cardiac arrest.

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