Legal action sought over cancellation of Bar Council’s Independence Day event

An executive member of Bangladesh Bar Council has demanded for legal action against the people responsible for cancelling the organisation’s event marking the Independence and National Day.

Advocate SM Rezaul Karim, also the chairman of finance committee of the Bar Council, the licencing and regulatory body for lawyers, also demanded an investigation into the matter to the chairman of its executive committee.

He said in an application that Bar Council’s Secretary Anisur Rahman on March 23 issued an official letter for observing the Independence Day on March 26.

Advocate Rezaul said that as an elected member of the Bar Council he went to National Monument at Savar on March 26 to observe the day and waited there for a long time but no official or staff of the council was present there.

Later, Nazmul Ahsan, a Bar Council official, informed him over phone that the administration department of the council had cancelled the programme, he said.   

Officials and staff of Bangladesh Bar Council have been paying tributes to the martyrs of the Liberation War of Bangladesh by placing wreaths at the National Monument at Savar on the occasion of Independence and National Day for a long time, he said, adding that cancelling such a programme is a matter of arrogance and tantamount to sedition.

He requested the chairman of Bar Council’s Executive Committee to take appropriate legal action after a thorough investigation against those responsible for cancelling the decision.

Contacted, Bar Council’s Executive Committee’s Chairman Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told The Daily Star that he will raise the issue at the next meeting of the committee and will look into the matter.