Dhaka: Accusing the government of playing ducks and drakes with people’s fate, BNP senior leader Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain on Friday underscored the need for creating a mass upsurge for brining a change in the country.

‘The current fascist regime is playing a game with the public life to hang onto power. Under the current circumstances of the country, we should not do politics sitting at home. We must be out on field and create a mass upheaval to bring a change in the country,’ he said.

The BNP leader came up with the remarks while speaking at a discussion at the Jatiya Press Club arranged by Barrister Abdus Salam Talukder Smrity Sangsad marking the ex-BNP secretary general’s 17th death anniversary, reports UNB.

On 20 August 1999, Salam Talukder died on the way to Singapore for medical treatment.

Recalling Salam Talukder’s contributions to BNP and facing its various crises, Mosharraf said he had taken to the streets responding to party chairperson Khaleda Zia’s call during the anti-autocracy movement in the 80s putting his life at risk.

‘We’ll have now to take to the streets like him responding to our chairperson’s call,’ he told his party colleagues.

Another BNP standing committee member Nazrul Islam Khan alleged that the current government is indulging in massive plundering by obliterating democracy.

Mentioning that a sustainable development can’t be ensured in the country without ‘restoration of democracy’, he urged people from all walks of life to get united to have the democracy ‘restored’.

BNP vice chairman AZM Zahid Hossain, joint secretary general Mahbubuddin Khokan, and ex-MP Nilufar Chowdhury Moni, among others, spoke at the programme with Dhaka University ex-VC Prof Emajuddin in the chair.