The Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance has announced that it will hold a protest rally in Dhaka on Saturday to press home its demand to implement the February 12 referendum verdict by accepting the July National Charter in Jatiya Sangsad.

They made the decision on Thursday at a meeting of the alliance’s liaison committee in the capital’s Gulshan area. Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman chaired the meeting.

The alliance announced that they would hold the protest rally at 5:00pm on Saturday in front of Baitul Mokkaram National Mosque in the capital’s Purana Paltan area.

The alliance announced the protest rally a day after its lawmakers had staged a walkout from Jatiya Sangsad, alleging that there had been no clear parliamentary response to their adjournment motion regarding the implementation of the July National Charter (Reform of Constitution) Implementation Order 2025 and the status of the proposed Constitution Reform Council session. 

After the walkout, Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman, who moved the motion, warned at a press conference at the Jatiya Sangsad media centre of renewed street protests to press home the demand.

After Thursday’s meeting at Gulshan, the alliance’s liaison committee coordinator and Jamaat joint secretary general Hamidur Rahman Azad told reporters that they would hold a series of programmes to press home their demand for the parliament to accept the July National Charter.

Moreover, the liaison committee will sit in a meeting with the top leaders of the alliance on April 7 to finalise its next programmes, Hamidur said.

Leaders of the Amar Bangladesh Party, a partner of the alliance, on Thursday held a protest rally in Dhaka and called on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led government to take steps to accept the July National Charter (Reform of Constitution) Implementation Order 2025 in Jatiya Sangsad and to enact a law for implementing the spirit of the July Uprising.

The party organised the rally in front of its central office at Bijoynagar.

The party chairman, Mohammad Mojibur Rahman Monju, addressing the rally, said that about 70 per cent of voters supported the July National Charter in the referendum.

The achievements of the July Uprising will be undermined if the July Charter is not implemented, he added.

The party vice chairman, Abdul Ohab Minar, and central leaders Zobayer Ahmed Bhuiyan, ABM Khalid Hasan, Shahdat Ullah Tutul, among others, also spoke.

The rally was followed by a protest procession that marched through different city roads.