Khaleda turns ‘75’ today

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, now in jail, turns ‘75' today(Thursday).

BNP has fixed no programme to celebrate the day for today(Thursday).

However, the party will arrange doa mahfil across the country on Friday on the occasion.

BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi announced the programme at a press briefing at the party’s Nayapaltan central office later on Wednesday.

 “Our beloved leader’s (Khaleda’s) 75 birthday tomorrow (Thursday).  Our party will arrange doa mahfi all over the country seeking her early recovery from illness and long life,” he said.

He alleged that Khaleda has been kept in jail as she was subjected to political vengeance of the current government.

As in the last previous three years, the party has no programme to cut any cake to celebrate the birthday in the early hours of Thursday.

Amid criticisms by Awami League leaders for celebrating her birthday on the National Mourning Day, BNP marked her 72nd and 73rd and 74th birthdays through holding doa mahfil instead of cutting any cake.

Khaleda was sent to Old Dhaka Central Jail since her conviction in Zia Orphanage Trust graft case by a lower court on February 8, 2018. The BNP chief was shifted to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University on April 1 last for treatment and she has been staying there since then.

Meanwhile, the nation is set to observe the National Mourning Day the same day commemorating the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members on August 15, 1975.

Khaleda and her party have been observing August 15 as her birthday since 1991, but there are controversies about her actual date of birth and even the birth year.

Various records suggest Khaleda Zia was born in 1945 and she will turn 74 on Wednesday. But her party claimed in 2015 that her actual birth year is 1946. She also registered her birth year 1946 in her new passport.

According to Banglapedia and well-known encyclopedias Wikipedia and Britannica Khaleda was born to Iskandar Majumder, a businessman, and Taiyaba Majumder in Dinajpur district in 1945.

The biodata of Khaleda Zia submitted to the Parliament Secretariat when she was made the opposition leader last suggests that she was born on August 15, 1945.

Awami League leaders have long been claiming that her birthday is September 5, 1945 as per her marriage certificate while August 19, 1946 as per her first passport. Khaleda herself put the date as August 9, 1944 while registering for her matriculation exams, they said.