<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b><font color="#311873">Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) central office in Dhaka’s Nayapaltan was reopened on Thursday morning, nearly two and a half months after closure following clashes with police during the party’s grand rally on October 28, 2023.</font></b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Some BNP leaders and activists, led by the party’s Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, unlocked the collapsible gate of the office around 10:42am.</div><div><br></div><div>They entered the office while shouting various slogans in the name of party founder Ziaur Rahman and Chairperson Khaleda Zia.</div><div><br></div><div>“We entered BNP’s central office by breaking the lock. A massive rally was foiled through a brutal crackdown by the government’s subservient law-enforcement agencies on October 28…later police locked the office,” said Rizvi.</div><div><br></div><div>He said BNP’s standing committee members, led by Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan, will hold a press conference — on the national election held on January 7 — at the office at 3 pm.</div><div><br></div><div>The BNP leader said they will now clean the office for holding the press meet.</div><div><br></div><div>After the party’s grand rally was foiled halfway through on October 28 at Nayapaltan amid clashes with police, the collapsible gate of the BNP's office was closed with the deployment of a huge number of law enforcers in the area.</div><div><br></div><div>Members of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) marked the areas in front of the main gate of the BNP office with the crime scene tape inscribed with "Do not cross” to collect evidence for investigation into severe political violence.</div><div><br></div><div>Later, the CID's Crime Scene Unit collected evidence from the site and later removed the crime scene tape.</div><div><br></div><div>Following the clashes, law enforcers launched a crackdown on senior BNP leaders and activists, and arrested BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and several other leaders, forcing most of them to go into hiding to avoid arrest.</div><div><br></div><div>Though thousands of BNP leaders and activists brought out a Victory Day rally on December 16 in Nayapaltan, they did not reopen their central office.</div><div><br></div><div>BNP finally reopened the office four days after the 12th parliamentary election that was boycotted by most opposition parties. According to UNB reports&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div><div><br></div>