Prime Minister’s political assistant Md Rashed Khan has sharply criticised National Citizen Party (NCP) Convener Nahid Islam, claiming the student-leader-turned-politician has lost public support.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Rashed Khan wrote that Nahid Islam had urged the ongoing garment workers’ movement to continue, yet workers had returned to their jobs. He asserted that if Nahid Islam issued a call now, “not even 100 people would gather,” and expressed hope that Nahid had received proof of this reality.
He questioned the “great downfall” of what he called the “great hero” of the 2024 mass uprising and asked why the NCP had turned into a name-only party, adding that Nahid Islam could not escape responsibility for the outcome.
In the same post, Rashed Khan accused Nahid Islam and his associates of believing they alone had carried out the 2024 uprising. He said the more arrogant Nahid becomes, the more he will realize that they did not do everything alone. He further asked whether Nahid was able to see who still stood with him and who was rejecting him, pointing to the departure of leaders such as Samanta Sharmin as evidence of lost capacity to retain senior figures.
“Where he has lost the ability to retain leaders like Samanta Sharmin, why would the people take to the streets at his call?” Rashed Khan wrote.
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The post comes amid ongoing garment workers’ wage protests in industrial areas including Gazipur, Mirpur, Ashulia, and Savar, where workers have demanded a higher minimum wage. Nahid Islam, who serves as NCP Convener and Opposition Chief Whip, has publicly backed the workers’ demands as legitimate, criticized the government’s handling of the protests (including the formation of a wage board), and called for continued movement against what he described as government failures. Reports indicate many factories have begun resuming operations.
Samanta Sharmin, a prominent NCP leader and former senior joint convener who was later redesignated as joint convener, announced her resignation from the party on Thursday. In her statement, she cited the NCP’s alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, electoral strategy, inadequate women’s political representation, and internal restructuring without a full council as reasons for leaving, saying the party had abandoned its founding values.
Rashed Khan, frequently described in local reports as a political assistant to the Prime Minister, has previously criticized NCP leadership on ideological and organizational grounds. The exchange reflects continuing rivalry between figures associated with the current government and leaders of the NCP, which emerged from the 2024 anti-discrimination student movement with direct patronage of former cheif adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus.