Bangladesh has formally registered the National Citizen Party (NCP), an offshoot of Students Against Discrimination (SAD), the group that spearheaded last year's uprising that toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government.
The recognition comes ahead of the February general election and marks the party’s first official entry into the political arena.
According to a gazette notification issued Monday, the Election Commission (EC) has allotted the NCP the electoral symbol “Shapla Koli,” or water lily bud.
The move coincided with a dramatic development: on the same day, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) sentenced Hasina to death in absentia for “crimes against humanity” tied to her government’s crackdown on student-led protests.
The EC “has registered NCP as a political party until further orders,” the state-run BSS news agency reported Tuesday, citing the notification.
The NCP had initially sought the “Shapla” — the water lily — as its symbol, but the request was rejected because the emblem is not among the 115 electoral symbols approved under existing regulations.
The “Shapla,” notably, is also the national emblem of Bangladesh.
Following the rejection in September, the NCP warned of protests and accused the authorities of denying it a fair choice.
However, earlier this month, the party backtracked from its previous stance and accepted 'Shapla Koli' as its official electoral symbol.
The NCP had said it plans to field candidates in all 300 constituencies in the upcoming parliamentary election.
The party's registration comes as Bangladesh heads for a tense election season marked by political uncertainty and growing public attention on new and emerging players.
At a press briefing in Dhaka on Tuesday, Senior Secretary of the EC Secretariat Akhtar Ahmed said the commission had started working on the registration of 143 political parties.
In the first stage of review, he said, it rejected the applications of 121 parties. The EC on Tuesday published the final voter list ahead of the parliamentary polls. The total number of registered voters stands at 127,695,183. Among them, 64,814,907 are male voters, 62,879,042 females, and 1,234 transgenders.
