Earlier, on February13, having met Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, chief of the Awami League and leader of the majority party in the National Assembly, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, chairman of the Pakistan People's Party which held the second largest number of seats in the legislature, the president declared that the assembly would meet in Dhaka to frame a constitution for the country.

Under the provisions of the Legal Framework Order, the elected representatives of the country, 313 in all, would produce a constitution, following which power would be transferred to a civilian government.

Only days after the Awami League's sweeping triumph at the general elections in December 1970, President Yahya had referred to Mujib as Pakistan's future prime minister.

Politics in Pakistan, however, took a distinct nosedive when, on February15, Z.A. Bhutto declared that his party could not attend the National Assembly session without a guarantee of concessions from the Awami League over the Six Point program for regional autonomy.

On the AL's behalf, General Secretary Tajuddin Ahmed described Bhutto's position as absurd. When Yahya called off the scheduled March 1 session of the assembly, Bengali militancy took rapid strides in East Pakistan, which was now being referred to as Bangladesh by its people.

On March 2, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman called a general strike all over the province, thus effectively bringing it under his control as the elected leader of the nation.

On the same day, the students of Dhaka University, under the banner of the Chhatra Sangram Parishad and led by A.S.M Abdur Rab, Noor-e-Alam Siddiqui, Abdul Kuddus Makhan and Shahjahan Siraj, raised the flag, for the first time, of what was soon to be a free Bangladesh. This act radicalized the Bengali protests even more.

The next day, March 3, President Yahya Khan was back on air, this time to inform the country that he was calling a round table conference of political leaders in Dhaka on March 10 to defuse the situation.

Bhutto, who had earlier refused to attend the NA session, now eagerly accepted the invitation to the RTC. For his part, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman rejected the invitation outright, and made it clear that the people of Bangladesh would settle for nothing less than a full session of the National Assembly. Yahya's plan thus fell apart. Meanwhile, Bangladesh was under the clear leadership of Bangabandhu.

The Awami League had clearly established a de-facto administration. On the streets, Bengalis from all sectors of society marched to demand full independence for Bangladesh.

Eminent personalities like Quazi Motahar Hossain and Begum Sufia Kamal gave impetus to the growing struggle through demanding an establishment of Bengali democratic rights.

The momentum thus generated led the officers and employees of Radio Pakistan Dhaka into renaming the station as Dhaka Betar. It was one more sign of the way Bangladesh's people were surely and swiftly moving away from Pakistan.

The fury of the Bengali protest had not been anticipated by the ruling circles based in Islamabad. The Yahya junta, and even Bhutto, were unable to tackle a situation they had not been prepared for.

While support for Mujib was total in Bangladesh, in West Pakistan politicians such as Asghar Khan, Khan Abdul Wali Khan and Mufti Mahmood came down hard on Bhutto for having precipitated the crisis.

On March 6, the soft-spoken governor of East Pakistan, Vice Admiral Syed Mohammad Ahsan, resigned (and that was only days after General Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, the zonal martial law administrator, had quit and been replaced by General Tikka Khan).

The regime quickly replaced him with Tikka Khan, who now was martial law administrator as well as governor. But Tikka soon discovered he was not going to have an easy sailing when Justice B.A. Siddiqui, the chief justice of the East Pakistan High Court, declined to swear him in as governor.

The protests on the streets, the domination of the campuses by students, and the everyday expressions of support for the non-violent non-cooperation movement Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had launched were all chipping away at the state of Pakistan itself.

In a number of cities and towns, soldiers of the Pakistan army fired into the crowds, prompting more anger among the population. Meanwhile, as the non-cooperation movement gathered pace, speculation arose over what Bangabandhu would say at the public rally he was scheduled to address at the Race Course on March 7.

It was clear that the students in particular and people in general expected him to declare Bangladesh an independent state on the day.

Foreign news media, as also newspapers in West Pakistan, remained in a state of suspended animation. The military junta at that point was unsure of how to respond should Mujib go for a unilateral declaration of independence for Bangladesh.

A number of West Pakistani politicians openly called on Yahya Khan to stave off an even graver crisis by handing over power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

On the evening of March 6, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman huddled with his team to deliberate on the specifics of his address at the public rally the following day. The Bangladesh flag, a crimson sun topped with a map of the province against a background of green, fluttered on rooftops in the capital and elsewhere.

As the day deepened into night, the erosion of the authority of the Pakistan state went on unstoppably in its eastern province. It was no more a question of how Pakistan could be saved. It had become more a matter of how Bangladesh could turn into a sovereign state.