BANGLADESH

The prime minister has presented cheques as honorarium and 'Doel' laptops to the family members of the martyred and war-wounded freedom fighters on the occasion of the 40th Armed Forces Day.

Earlier, on her arrival at Dhaka cantonment, Sheikh Hasina placed wreath at Shikha Anirban (eternal flame) to pay homage to the martyred armed forces men, who made the supreme sacrifice during the Liberation War in 1971.

After placing the wreath, Hasina, who also holds the defense portfolio, stood in solemn silence for a while as a mark of respect to the martyrs.

A smartly turned-out contingent drawn from the Army, Navy and Air Force presented armed salute as the bugle played the last post.

Later, the prime minister signed the visitor's book kept at Shikha Anirban.

The prime minister was received by the chiefs of the three services and the principal staff officer of the Armed Forces Division.

Armed Forces Day is observed in the country on Nov 21 commemorating the day in 1971 when the members of Army, Navy and Air Force of the Bangladesh liberation war forces launched a combined offensive against the occupation Pakistani Army.

Defense adviser to the prime minister Major General (retd) Tariq Ahmed Siddique, state minister for liberation war affairs A B Tajul Islam, Chief of Army Staff General M Abdul Mubeen, chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Z U Ahmed and Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal S M Ziaur Rahman and senior civil and military officials were present on the occasion.

The Election Commission is set to announce the poll schedules of newly formed Comilla City Corporation on Tuesday, election commissioner Muhammad Sohul Hussain has said.

"All complexities over the Comilla City Corporation election is over. The election schedules will be announced tomorrow (Tuesday)," Sohul told reporters after a long discussion held at the EC office on Monday.

Sohul said overall preparations for the election were discussed at the meeting.

The election commissioner also said that the gazette on boundary demarcation work had been published and the voter list was also ready.

"Now, it is time to announce the poll schedules," added Sohul.

Comilla City Corporation was formed by merging Comilla Municipality and Comilla Sadar Municipality (South) on July 10 this year following a longstanding demand of the locals.

According to the Local Government (City Corporation) Act 2009, the city corporation is supposed to go to polls within 180 days of its formation. So, the Comilla city elections must be declared by the last week of November and the elections held in the beginning of January.

According to senior assistant secretary to EC (local government) Farhad Hossain, the city corporation has 27 general wards and nine reserved wards.

A total of 169,273 voters will be casting their votes at the 65 polling centers with 421 voting rooms during the city corporation polls.

"One returning officer and nine assistant returning officers will be there to ensure that the voting is held in a fair manner," Sohul added.

The CCC election is likely to be the last elections under the present Election Commission. The commission headed by ATM Shamsul Huda will expire on next February.

Though Bangladesh and India agreed to finalise the extradition treaty at the earliest, New Delhi has told Dhaka that it could not locate the two absconding killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and asked for additional information about them.

"We could not locate them yet, but we have sought additional information from Bangladesh government about them," Indian home secretary R K Singh said on Monday.

Singh and his Bangladesh counterpart Monzur Hossain were addressing a news conference a day after the twelfth home secretary-level talks between the two countries concluded in New Delhi.

"If they are in India, we will be happy to help Bangladesh to bring them to justice. We will leave no stone unturned to find them and hand them over to Bangladesh government."

Though five killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were hanged at Dhaka Central Jail on Jan 28, 2010, Abdul Majed and Moslehuddin—both former Bangladesh Army officers and convicted of assassinating the nation's independence hero and most of his family on Aug 15, 1975—are still absconding and evading the noose.

A section of media earlier reported that Majed and Moslehuddin might be hiding in India.

Hussain said that Bangladesh expected India to provide "assistance in tracking, apprehending and handing over of the killers of Bangabandhu" and Dhaka would provide all information available with it to New Delhi to help it locate them.

Of the five other absconding convicts in the case related to killing of Bangabandhu, M Rashed Chowdhury and Noor Chowdhury are believed to be living in US and Canada, while Abdul Aziz Pasha died in Zimbabwe. Apart from Majed and Moslehuddin, Khandkar Abdur Rashid and Shariful Haque Dalim could not be traced yet.

Indian home minister P Chidambaram had on July 30 said in Dhaka that New Delhi would make all possible efforts to locate the killers of Bangabandhu and hand them over to authorities in Bangladesh.

Singh and Hossain led the Indian and Bangladeshi delegations respectively in the home secretary-level talks that started on Saturday.

During the two-day talks, both sides agreed that the negotiation on the extradition treaty could be concluded soon so that it could be inked at the earliest. Singh told journalists that New Delhi had given a draft of the proposed treaty to Dhaka and the latter was now studying it.

Bangladesh is understood to have sought clarifications and modifications on certain clauses of the draft prepared by India.

Both New Delhi and Dhaka believe that the Extradition Treaty would complete the legal framework on bilateral security cooperation.

Hossain and Singh agreed to operationalise the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, Agreement on Transfer of Sentenced Persons and Agreement on Combating Organised Crime and Illegal Drug Trafficking, which had been signed during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi in January 2010. They also agreed to implement Coordinated Border Management Plan, which had been inked during Chidambaram's visit to Dhaka last July.

The two home secretaries reviewed the sharing of intelligence between the two countries and "reaffirmed their resolve to take immediate action on the basis of real time and actionable information through nodal points of the two countries."

Both sides agreed to develop mechanisms to further hasten the process of verification of nationality status of prisoners lodged in jails of either country, particularly of those who have completed their sentence, to enable their early repatriation.

They also discussed about hand-over of Indian insurgent leader Anup Chetia, who served a jail sentence in Bangladesh after being caught in 1997. Hossain informed Singh that a legal process was on and Chetia's plea for asylum was before a court in Bangladesh. Dhaka and Delhi would move forward on the issue after the legal process was over.

"Both sides agreed to provide consular access for expediting verification of nationality of persons lodged in the jails. In order to further intensify people-to-people contact, both sides agreed to discuss visa-related issues in the next meeting on Agreement for Revised Travel Arrangements, which would be held soon," read the joint statement issued after the conclusion of talks between the home secretaries.

Though a Bangladeshi citizen was shot dead by India's Border Security Force personnel just a few hours before the two home secretaries commenced their talks on Saturday, the two sides "noted with appreciation the firing incidence along the international border considerably reduced." Both sides agreed that utmost restraint would be exercised to avoid human casualty.

They agreed to enhance cooperation in capacity building of police and other law-enforcing agencies. Dhaka welcomed the offer made by New Delhi for training of police personnel of Bangladesh and cooperation for capacity building of police.

Singh lauded Dhaka's efforts to address security concerns of New Delhi over the past one-and-a-half years.

Due to tacit cooperation between the security agencies of Bangladesh and India earlier in 2009 and 2010, a number of top leaders of insurgent organisations active in northeastern Indian states of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur had landed in the custody of the law-enforcing agencies of India. New Delhi appreciated the cooperation from Dhaka in international forums.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sep 24 last, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had upheld the security cooperation between his country and Bangladesh as an example.

"In South Asia, there are encouraging signs of cooperation in the area of security, as exemplified in India's growing cooperation with Bangladesh. Such cooperation is adding to the security of both our countries," he had said.

A moderate earthquake has jolted parts of Bangladesh.

The 5.9-magnitude tremor was felt at 9.15am on Monday, senior meteorologist of the Met Office Farah Diba told .

No casualties were reported immediately.

"The epicentre was in Myanmar, some 468 kilometres away from Dhaka," Farah said.

The Meteorological Department last recorded two earthquakes in Chandpur and Mymensingh on Nov 2 and Nov 5.

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake shook Bangladesh and parts of India on Sept 18 evening.

A full Appellate Division bench headed by the chief justice has upheld the chamber judge's orders for the telecoms regulator BTRC to not hamper operations of Grameenphone.

The court also asked the parties to settle in the High Court by Dec 14 the petition of the nation's largest mobile-phone operator over payment of spectrum assignment fee and Value Added Tax (VAT).

The seven-strong bench led by chief justice Mozammel Haque, on Monday, upheld the Nov 3 ruling by chamber judge Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain which had come on a leave-to-appeal petition filed by BTRC against a preceding High Court order.

Justice Hossain had said the matter of licence renewal of Grameenphone will be decided by a regular court.

BTRC's counsel Khandaker Reza-E Rakib told  that the order by the chamber judge regarding licence renewal and spectrum fee has been upheld and the High Court would now give the verdict.

GP lawyer Mohammad Mehedi Hasan Chowdhury told journalists: "According to the court order, Grameenphone can run its operation without any hindrance."

The watchdog in an Oct 17 letter had asked the Grameenphone to pay Tk 30.624 billion in fees for licence renewal and spectrum allocation in 2008. But GP challenged the move in court saying BTRC claimed Tk 2.368 billion extra fee for the spectrum allocated.

The High Court on Oct 26 stayed the effectiveness of a BTRC notice asking Grameenphone to pay additional Tk 2.37 billion for the radio frequency in 1800 megahertz band.

On Nov 1, chamber judge of the Appellate Division justice M Imman Ali felt embarrassed to hear the petition.

Later, the chief justice sent the petition to justice Syed Mahmud Hossain for further action.

Advocate Mahbubey Alam, Ajmal Haque QC and barrister Rakib argued for BTRC at the hearing, while barristers Rokan Uddin Mahmud, Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, Mehedi Hasan, and advocate Anisul Haque represented Grameenphone.

The DSE has recommended that sponsor directors of all listed companies hold at least 30 percent stake, and those below the level buy back in six months their shares.

In a meeting on Monday evening, the board of directors of the Dhaka Stock Exchange took decisions that would have an impact on some of Bangladesh's biggest players in the business.

Shakil Rizvi, the DSE president, told reporters after the meeting that the board had decided to dissolve all but audit and demutualisation committees.

The listing committee, perhaps the most powerful one with authority to virtually approve IPO process, was one of the dozen or so DSE wings that stood dissolved after the Monday evening's meeting.

Rizvi only read out a written statement and did not take any questions.

The DSE meeting came after the indices plunged to new lows over the past week leading to streets protests and then intervention from the prime minister. On Wednesday night, Sheikh Hasina chaired a high-profile meeting that resulted in decisions to prop up the prices.

The DSE board decided to recommend that there be a mandatory provision for all company sponsor directors that they hold at least 30pc stake.

According to the DSE proposals meant for SEC clearance, those holding below 30 percent in any listed company should bring their holding up to 15 percent in three months, and the rest in six months.

This would mean sponsor directors of many major companies would have to buy back shares they had sold at high profits at the current market prices.

Failing to do so, these sponsor directors would lose their control on management of companies they own not even 15 percent in many cases.

Currently, the sponsor directors of Beximco Limited hold only 13.25pc shares of the company, retail investors 76.45pc and foreigners the rest, while sponsor directors of Beximco Pharma hold 12.97pc shares, retail investors 52.8pc, foreigners 23.02pc and institutional investors 11.21pc, according to the DSE website.

In case of Uttara Bank, sponsor directors hold meagre 8.13pc shares, retail investors 88.62pc and institutional investors 3.19pc.

Sponsor directors of City Bank own 12.88pc stake, Southeast Bank 28.14pc, National Bank Limited (NBL) 29.21pc and AB Bank a low 13.9pc. Prime Bank sponsor directors hold 43.25pc shares of the bank.

According to the DSE proposals, any investor holding at least five percent shares—by acquisition or otherwise—will be eligible for a seat on the board of directors of that company.

Each company will have to nominate at least one director from among general shareholders.

From now on, the sponsor directors should only be allowed to sell shares through 'block market', and not through public market.

The companies which sold shares through direct listing must buy back if the prices of those securities fell below the issue price.

Another proposal talks of the companies raising capital through the placement route, instead of going for listing on the bourses.

The DSE recommends that such companies settle the issue of status of their investors within three months.

The proposals would now require regulatory approval.

The DSE also proposed to relax certain rules for commercial banks trading in the stock market. When calculating the banks' exposure, the board suggested that the market price or cost price –whichever would be lower—be taken into account.

At present, the cost price or market price—whichever is higher—provides the basis for such calculation.