The Awami League will mark the 42nd anniversary of the homecoming of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday with discussion meetings and prayers and distribution of charities.
On this day in 1981 Hasina returned home from six-year exile in New Delhi, India to take over as the president of Awami League and launch a 21-year pro-democracy movement against military regimes to bring the party back to power by winning the national election in 1996.
Hasina and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana were abroad on August 15, 1975 when their father Bangladesh President Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated with most of his family members at his Dhanmandi-32 residence in Dhaka.
The two daughters had since then been forced to live in exile until Hasina was elected president of Awami League in her absence and returned home on this historic day amid welcome by lakhs of cheering supporters.
After landing at Dhaka’s Kurmitola airport on the rain-swept afternoon on May 17 Hasina addressed a huge rally at Manik Miah Avenue where she vowed to dedicate her life to the restoration of democracy and fulfil Bangabndhu’s unfinished task of building Bangladesh into a ‘Sonar Bangla’, a land of prosperity.
Also read: Sheikh Hasina's Homecoming Day observed
To mark the day Awami League, its front and associated bodies will organise discussions and other programmes highlighting the significance of her return and how she changed the political and development landscape of Bangladesh as the prime minister of Bangladesh.
A discussion meeting of Bangladesh Awami League will be held at Bangabandhu International Conference Center in the capital on Tuesday with party’s general secretary Obaidul Quader in the chair.
Bangladesh Awami Jubo League will organise another discussion programme where presidium member of Awami League Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya will attend as the chief guest.
Jubo League chairman Sheikh Fazle Shams Parash will preside over the programme while its general secretary Moinul Hasan Khan Nikhil will conduct it.
The organisation will also distribute clothes, wheel chair and white cane to the physically challenged people during the programme.
Special prayers will be held at mosques and other places of worships across the country seeking blessings for the prime minister.
Also read: Hasina’s homecoming brought country back from darkness: Radwan Mujib
The Hindu community will arrange prayer programme at the Dhakeswari temple in the capital at 10 am, the Buddhist community at the Internatiolnal Buddhist monastery temple at Merul Badda at 9:30 am and the Christian community at the YMC church at Senpara Parbat in Mirpur-10 at 6 pm.