BNP chief Khaleda Zia has resorted to lies in an attempt to divert people's attention from the arson deaths and to shift the blame on the government, said the Awami League in an instant reaction to Khaleda's speech yesterday.

The ruling party demanded that Khaleda disclose when and where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to hold a participatory elections dissolving parliament after January 5, 2014 elections, which Khaleda claimed in her speech.

Earlier, the BNP chairperson held a press conference at her Gulshan office and made a statement.

AL Joint General Secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif at a press briefing at the party president's Dhanmondi office said, “Would you [Khaleda] kindly tell us where, when and on which date our prime minister said this?”

He said people would not fall for Khaleda's falsehood or her attempt to shift blame.

Hanif said Khaleda had not participated in the January 5, 2014, elections because Jamaat was disqualified from the polls. She had intimidated voters and resorted to violence to foil the elections. Hanif said           500 polling centres were torched and 142 voters were killed during the  polls.

On the abolishment of the caretaker government system, which the BNP-led alliance is agitating to have restored, the AL leader said every political party raised allegations against the system after being defeated in polls since 1996.

He claimed that the system was nullified in higher court after the AL assumed power in 2009. The party has introduced a democratic process to hold general elections following               the system in place in other democracies. 

Hanif said the BNP chief in 2007 had said people did not want the caretaker government system and that the people would throw it away one day.

Referring to the deaths in arson attacks since January 5, when the alliance called an indefinite nationwide blockade, and the torching of over 1,200 vehicles, he said           Khaleda would have to face trial for those.

“It has already been proved who are behind these subversive activities,” he said, adding that those who have been caught, by people and police, were members of the BNP's and Jamaat's associated bodies.

On Khaleda's claim that                 people were with the ongoing movement, the AL leader said the BNP leaders and workers themselves were not observing the agitation programmes.

“We condemn and protest Khaleda Zia's statements and demand their withdrawal,” he said.

The AL would give an elaborate response to the BNP chief's statement today.