After a 17-year-long exile, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) acting chairperson and heir to the influential Zia family, touched the soil of Dhaka on Thursday. The Bangladesh Biman flight carrying Tarique Rahman landed at Dhaka airport at 11:39 am on Thursday to a grand welcome.
BNP leaders and activists stationed at the airport area to welcome the next potential Prime Minister and his family. Tarique Rahman is accompanied by his wife Zubaida Rahman, and daughter Zaima Rahman.
All eyes are on Rahman, whose activities over the next three days have been carefully choreographed by the party. According to Salahuddin Ahmed, a member of the party's standing committee, Rahman has his next three days packed.
Hours after he landed, the BNP leader attended a reception where he will express his gratitude and thanks to the leaders and workers and address the countrymen. Then he will go to Evercare Hospital to see his ailing mother, BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia. From there, he will go to his residence at Gulshan-2. There will be no other programs that day.
On Friday, Rahman will attend the Friday prayers, after which he will visit the grave of Ziaur Rahman in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in the capital. From there, he will go to the National Memorial in Savar to pay tribute to the martyrs of the Liberation War. On Saturday, there will be two programmes. He will also work on the national identity card on that day. However, the party has not announced whether Tarique Rahman will go to the Election Commission office in Agargaon in the capital in person or not. He will do all the work of becoming a voter on that day.
After that, he will go to the Dhaka University campus to visit the grave of slain radical leader Osman Hadi.
Tarique Rahman will then go to visit the injured people of the July uprising who are undergoing treatment at Pangu Hospital. After that, there will be another program, the details of which will be announced later, said Salahuddin Ahmed.