Apurbo Ahmed Jewel:- After Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League came to power in 2009, the interest of the general public in government jobs increased. When Sheikh Hasina’s government announced the 8th pay scale, university-passed youth left high-paying private jobs and sat for government job exams. The craze for BCS in particular reached another level. Thinking about the benefits and social status of government jobs, students spend time studying day and night to get government jobs. But the Hasina government had a nefarious motive behind tempting talented youth to government jobs. The government planned its plan thinking that if talented youth are given ample benefits and opportunities to commit corruption, they will not go against the government. In this way, the young bureaucrats of the administration became corrupt. However, the administration began to rot at the hands of bureaucrats during Sheikh Hasina’s first term in 1996.
In 1996, towards the end of the BNP regime, former Planning Secretary M Kha Alamgir entered politics by forming ‘Janatar Mancha’ with bureaucrats. The bureaucrats got involved in political activities because of him. As a reward for his work, M Kha Alamgir was made a state minister by Sheikh Hasina. Then, in 2009, after Sheikh Hasina came back to power, M Kha Alamgir became the home minister. On the other hand, Sheikh Hasina’s political advisor and senior secretary, HT Imam, started using the administration completely for political purposes. No promotion, new appointment or transfer would be made without the approval of this unscrupulous bureaucrat. The issue of fraud and influence in the appointment of candidates who were staunch Chhatra League in several controversial BCS exams was an open secret. No office would move without his behest. He played the most important role in monopolizing influence and completely Awami Leagueizing the administration. With the patronage of HT Imam, his followers have turned the business of appointment, promotion and transfer into an institutionalized rule.
Seeing the absolute dominance and abuse of power of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s political advisor HT Imam, other bureaucrats also started getting involved in politics and gathering their own sugarcane. The bureaucrats who demanded to bring Hasina’s government to power without votes continued to exert their influence in the administration in their own way. The officials started to illegally take various privileges by claiming to be former leaders and activists of Chhatra League or members of Awami family and freedom fighter families.
HT Imam was the guru of the bureaucrats who conspired to bring Hasina to power after the caretaker government was abolished in 2014. Basically, it was on his advice that the bureaucrats held three consecutive one-sided elections without voters. The officials who repeatedly demanded to bring Hasina to power without the mandate of the people became very reckless. Some of them expressed their desire to become MPs in the non-voting elections on the nomination of the boat. Sheikh Hasina did not leave their desire unfulfilled. In the 2018 elections, Hasina made former senior secretary Manjur Hossain Bulbul an MP from the Faridpur-1 constituency. In 2023, former senior secretary Sajjadul Hasan became an MP unopposed as the sole candidate of the Awami League in the by-election for the Netrokona-4 (Madan-Mohanganj-Khaliajuri) constituency. Sheikh Hasina made Sajjadul Hasan’s elder brother Obaidul Hasan the Chief Justice of the country.
If a section of bureaucrats gets involved in abuse of exclusive power and corruption, then naturally others will not sit there. Anyone can get involved in corruption. In this way, the administration has basically been destroyed. Because if the bureaucrats at the top of the administration can be honest, they can establish purity. And if they themselves get involved in corruption and nepotism, then they do not have the moral strength to tell others to be honest.
