Sagar Biswas :The ruling party Awami League and the former Post and Telecommunications Minister Abdul Latif Siddiqui have sent separate letters to Election Commission [EC] giving explanation and counter explanation about expulsion of Latif Siddiqui from the party and cancellation of his parliament membership. When the AL requested the EC to cancel Latif Siddiqui’s membership in the parliament saying that he is ‘no more’ in AL, the former ruling party leader in contrary claimed that the AL has ‘no authority’ to expel him from any tier of the party through any legal way. Latif Siddiqui, the Tangail-4 Constituency lawmaker, sent the letter to EC on Sunday, in which he wrote: “AL has no authority to expel me. I do request the EC not to drag the matter to a hearing dispute, better send the matter to the Speaker for a decision.” The letter signed and written by Latif Siddiqui on the pad of member of Jatiya Sangsad was handed over to the EC by his personal assistant Mohammad Rubel.In the letter he said, “I’m innocent. For the sake of discussion, if the baseless allegations against me about defamation of religion [at a meeting with Tangail immigrants in New York during visit with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina] are taken up as true; even so the AL Central Working Committee has no authority to cancel my party membership.” “I went there as the people and government representative and so, my statement must be considered as the statement of public representative. There is no scope to treat it as the statement of AL. My expulsion from AL was based on wrong clarification. So, the subsequent decisions based on that clarification will be treated as wrong in the eyes of law,” clarifying his New York statement, Siddiqui said to the EC. “It is also not relevant to the summary which was sent to Speaker in accordance with article 64 [4] of the Constitution. I think, the EC has nothing to do as it did not contrast with articles 66 [2] and 70 of the constitution. I appeal to the EC to take the depth of the issue and its future under active consideration. I again request the EC to send the matter to Speaker,” he said. On the other hand, the AL General Secretary and Public Administration Minister Syed Ashraful Islam in a letter yesterday formally proposed the EC to cancel Latif Siddiqui’s parliament membership.AL Deputy Office Secretary Mrinal Kanti Das handed over the letter to Secretary of EC Md Sirajul Islam. “He [Latif] is nobody of AL. He has lost the right in a legal way. In the letter, the AL has requested the EC to cancel the Latif’s parliament membership,” he said. Earlier on July 13, the parliament secretariat sent a letter to the EC to resolve the issue of parliamentary membership of Latif Siddiqui. “I had sent the letter to the EC to take decision on Abdul Latif Siddiqui,” Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said.The Speaker had taken the step after the AL sent the letter, signed by party’s general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam, to parliament secretariat on July 5 to determine Siddiqui’s fate informing that he was expelled from the party on October 24, 2014 in line with party’s constitution. At the same time, Ashraf’s letter was also sent to EC. After getting letter from Speaker, the EC sought explanation from both AL and Latif Siddiqui. And yesterday was the last date for giving explanation. Meanwhile, the EC legal branch sources said that they will take decision about it and fix a date for hearing of both AL and the lawmaker within next 15 days.They said, the JS membership of BNP’s Akhteruzzaman was cancelled in the same way. The EC, however, will inform the Speaker about its decision after their hearings.”The EC will take decision about the matter after seeing previous example, relevant law and constitution. The decision may come in the next meeting of EC,” Secretary of EC Md Sirazul Islam said.
