Our Correspondent . Narsingdi
A leader of Awami League Narsingdi district unit and one each of Narsingdi Sadar upazila units of the AL-backed Bangladesh Chhatra League and Jubal League backed by around 200 organisation members captured a tender box of Madhabdi municipality on Tuesday.
The municipal authorities had invited tenders for a work of maintenance and repairs of four roads at an estimated cost of about Tk 2.50 crore and local contractors interested in the work purchased 51 tender schedules.
On Tuesday, the last day for tender submission, the tender box was set up in the office of Madhabdi Municipality executive engineer Md Badsha Alamgir.
However, at around 9:00am, BCL Narsingdi Sadar upazila unit president Md Zakaria with the help of a vice president of the AL Narsingdi district unit, Juba League district unit VP Mostak Ahmed, and a large number of their followers captured the tender box and had kept it under their control until 3:00pm, the tender submission deadline, witnesses said.
During that period, Mostak allegedly had deposited a number of tenders in the name of some contractors of their choice but permitted no other contractor to drop any quotation.
On hearing the news, Narsingdi-based reporters rushed to Madhabdi and saw Badsha Alamgir’s office besieged by around 200 activists of Awami League and the two other organisations backed by it, while a contingent of police was sitting silently nearby.
When journalists asked the executive engineer who were the people surrounding his office and why, he said, ‘We had deployed police for maintaining law and order during tender submission. However, if no one comes to drop any quotation, what can we do? It was why only seven tenders had so far been dropped, mostly by Jubo League leader Mostak Ahmed.’