New political alliance to be launched Thursday

Nationalist Democratic Front (NDF) – a new alliance comprising 11 political parties – will be launched on Thursday. Sheikh Shawkat Hossain Nilu, the chief of a faction of National People’s Party (NPP), will head the new alliance. Sources said the new political platform will be made up of some small parties from the former 18-party alliance. Sheikh Shawkat Hossain Nilu was expelled from the BNP-led 20-party alliance in August reportedly for attending the prime minister's Iftar at Ganabhaban. However, NDF's emergence, at a time when the BNP is trying to expand the 20-party bloc, seems to have failed to raise concern in BNP and its allies. BNP leaders have said that its alliance would become ‘garbage free’ with a faction of a component leaving. The BNP had expanded its 4-party alliance to an 18-party alliance during the Awami League-led Grand Alliance government’s last tenure in a bid to boost its movement for a poll-time non-partisan government. Right after the January 5 polls boycotted by the BNP and its allies, the 18-party alliance became the 20-party combine. Nilu, who is about to become NDF chairman, said, ‘Our decision is final. We will announce it through a press conference in the city on Thursday,’ However, he said, ‘We’re not announcing that we’ll get out of the 20-party alliance, we're just announcing a new alliance,’ according to a news agency.