BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Thursday alleged that the government has kept the population low in the country in the just-published '6th Population and Housing Census 2022' only to show high per capita income.

“The country’s population is presented lower (than the actual figure) to show high per capita income. We usually calculate 18 crore people in our country. But it’ll be helpful to show much more per capita income if the population is counted 16 crore,” he said.

The BNP Secretary General made the remarks at a press conference at the party chairperson's Gulshan office in Gulshan reacting to the preliminary results of the census. 

He also said the planning minister himself admitted that the census calculation was not correct. “The data was not collected properly by going from house to house."

Earlier on Wednesday, the provisional data of the '6th census was revealed by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

According to the preliminary report of the population and household census, the county’s total population is 16,51,58,616, with a 1.22 per cent growth rate in place of the previous 1.37 per cent.

Fakhrul said a national population census should be conducted properly by collecting authentic information from every house.  

“But the government is misleading and deceiving people with incorrect information. The entire government is based on deception. It is a totally fake government,” he observed.

Read: AL's ‘mega corruption’ led country to edge of disaster: Fakhrul

Replying to a question, the BNP leader said the country has long been facing a political crisis as the government has destroyed democracy and the electoral system.  “An election is the main road or gateway to democracy. People of the whole country are now saying one thing loudly that there can be no fair election in this country if the Awami League government remains in power."  

Even, Fakhrul said, the Election Commission is being forced to say that the election will not be acceptable without the participation of the major parties. “Under such a situation, the government has started taking a strategy to bypass people’s demand and divert the issue to a different direction.”

About Mohiuddin Rony’s recent movement against various irregularities in the Bangladesh Railway, he said it was a part of Awami League’s strategy to confuse people.

“When Rony started the agitation, I said it would be seen very soon that this’s Awami League's strategy and finally it proved true. After ending his agitation, Rony entered the Awami League office. This is their strategy of diversion.”