The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has released the first batch of 237 potential candidates for the next national election, but several senior leaders were conspicuously absent. The announcement came at a press conference on Monday at the party chairperson’s office in Gulshan, Dhaka, where Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir read out the names. Of the 14-member BNP standing committee, 10 were included in the initial list, leaving out veteran leaders Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar, Rafiqul Islam Mia, Nazrul Islam Khan, and Selima Rahman. Out of 81 members of the BNP chairperson’s advisory council, 22 have been nominated, leaving a majority off the slate. Mirza Fakhrul emphasised the provisional nature of the list, saying: “We would like to make it clear that this is our list of potential candidates.
