The Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) led by Andaleeve Rahman Partho has quit from the BNP-led coalition following a dispute over the decision to join the 11th National Parliament.
“We are breaking away from the 20-party Alliance,” he told Bangla Tribune.
The official announcement was made in a statement sent to the media later.
BJP Secretary General Abdul Matin Saud blamed the BNP of ignoring allies regarding crucial decisions.
“They [the BNP] are now more focused on the Jatiya Oikya Front. The BNP had decided not to join parliament, which they changed without discussing with allies,” he told Bangla Tribune.
In the media statement, Partho said that the BJP was dumbfounded when the Jatiya Oikya Front’s two MPs-elect followed by five of the BNP took oath to their offices despite the allies unanimously agreed to boycott the Dec 30 polls.

Opposition politics wasmonopolized by the Oikya Front before the Dec 30 polls, and afterwards no other party from the 20-party alliance except for BNP was involved in making any important political decisions, he said in the statement describing the 20-party Alliance's meetings then as only ‘ceremonial’.



“The BNP has lost the moral right to reject the results of the farcical elections by joining parliament,” the statement reads.

The BNP or its senior leaders were yet to make any official comments.

A splinter group of HM Ershad’s Jatiya Party, the BJP was founded by Partho’s father Naziur Rahman Manzur, who was an influential minister in the Ershad regime.

After leaving the Jatiya Party, Manzur formed BJP in 2001 and joined the then-Four-party Alliance led by the BNP.
Partho came to driving seat of the party after his father’s death in 2004.
In 2012, the BNP took onboard several other allies to form the 18-party Alliance when it was spearheading a campaign for ‘polls under non-party government’, which was later expanded to the 20-party coalition.
The son of Awami League Presidium member Sheikh Fazlul Karim’s sister, Partho was elected the MP from Bhola-1 in the 2008 election, when the Awami League came in power. His father-in-law Sheikh Helal Uddin is the ruling MP from Bagerhat-1 while brother-in-law Sheikh Tanmoy the Awami League lawmaker of Bagerhat-2.

In 11th National Election, he contested from the Dhaka-17 seat with the BNP’s polls symbol ‘paddy sheaf’ but lost.