Hasina sidelines party veterans, inducts six new ministers

September 24th, 2009 DHAKA - US President Barack Obama has accepted an invitation by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to visit Bangladesh, media reports said Thursday. Seated next to Obama at a working dinner hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Hasina spoke on Bangladesh's woes in an era of climate change.

August 17th, 2009 THIRUVANANTHAPURAM - Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan Monday expanded his ministry by accommodating three allies in the 20-member council of ministers.

July 15th, 2009 Sharm-el-SHEIKH - The use of Bangladesh territory by Indian insurgent groups, the contentious Tipaimukh dam, railway projects as well as other issues were on the anvil when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina here Wednesday. The two prime ministers met for the first time since their respective electoral victories and congratulations were also in order.

July 5th, 2009 DHAKA - Advisors of Bangladesh's former caretaker government have denied the charge that they were responsible for serving 'poisoned' food to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when she was in jail and have demanded a fair probe. Hasina's current health advisor, Syed Mudassar Ali, repeated the charge levelled a week earlier by deputy leader in parliament Syeda Sajeda Choudhury.

May 8th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina may expand her cabinet that has a majority of first-termers to add some old hands and political allies, a media report said. She also plans to activate the Awami League that has been beset with infighting since its massive poll victory in December.

April 5th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered a crackdown on her party Awami League's student wing that is accused of increasingly indulging in criminal activities since she took office in January. The party's presidium, the highest policy making body, decided Saturday that she would quit the post as the 'guardian' of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL).

January 23rd, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed Saturday inducted six more junior ministers into her cabinet, raising the cabinet's strength to 38, officials said. President Iajuddin Ahmed administered the oath to the new state ministers at the presidential palace, Bangabhaban.

January 11th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has told her team of ministers, 25 of whom are newcomers, that she would remove them if they fail to perform. She told them to take charge of their ministries within seven days after which she 'will not accept excuses', New Age newspaper quoted her as saying Monday.

January 10th, 2009 DHAKA - Ready to join the new parliament and take on the government of her rival Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh's former prime minister Khaleda Zia insists that she would have won but for rigging in the Dec 29 poll. She contended at a rally in Noakhali that people voted for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), 'but the result was changed in favour of another party and alliance.

January 6th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh's first democratically elected government in over two years got to work Wednesday, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attended office after a landslide victory in the Dec 29 poll. She was sworn in as the prime minister Tuesday evening, ending the tenure of a military-backed caretaker government that held office for a week short of two years.

January 6th, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has made her personal physician the foreign minister in her 32-member team in which as many as 25 are newcomers. The new foreign minister Dipu Moni is a physician who has been treating Hasina since she escaped attempt on her life in 2004 that left her hearing and vision partially impaired.

January 3rd, 2009 DHAKA - Bangladesh's Awami League (AL), which is poised to form a new government, named Zillur Rahman as the country's next president, media reports said Sunday, quoting party chief Sheikh Hasina. 'The party will nominate its presidium member Zillur Rahman as head of the state,' Hasina said after her party's newly elected legislators took the oath of office, Ittefaq newspaper reported.

January 1st, 2009 DHAKA - Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina may choose younger and more educated leaders for her cabinet to fulfil her vision of a prosperous Bangladesh, in the process sidelining veterans who were part of the freedom movement that her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led in 1971. Hasina may opt for a small cabinet comprising 25-30 members, including a few renowned professionals as technocrat ministers for finance and law among others, said The Daily Star Friday.

December 30th, 2008 DHAKA - Bangladesh, where politics is dominated by two former prime ministers Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, will see a record 64 women sitting in its ninth Jatiya Sangsad (national assembly). For the first time, 19 women contesting for 23 parliamentary seats defeated their rivals by huge margins in the election that saw the Hasina-led alliance winning three-fourths of the 299 seats.

December 25th, 2008 DHAKA - The gloves are off in the last round of the poll campaign in Bangladesh with the two former prime ministers, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, levelling serious charges against each other. While Zia has accused 'a party' of trying to kill her, leaving nobody in doubt who she means, Hasina Friday said Zia and her Islamist alliance, in power during 2001-06, had 'siphoned off' Taka 200 billion (over three billion US dollars) from the country, Star Online reported.