Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) high command on Monday expelled two former leaders of the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), student wing of the party, for violating party discipline.
According to a press release signed by BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the two leaders are expelled from all posts, including the party's primary membership and asked its leaders and activists and also its associate bodies not to maintain any organisational contact or link with the two expelled former student leaders.
The expelled two leaders are Anisur Rahman Talukder Khokan, known to be close to Aman Ullah Aman, Joint Secretary General of the party, and Abu Sayeed, former vice president of the JCD, who led a dissident group of the party's student body in recent demonstrations against its new committee.
The action came following an attack on the BNP's Student Affairs Secretary Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee and Assistant Secretary Sultan Salahuddin Tuku by some aggrieved JCD activists on November 7. The report on the incident was published in The Daily Observer.
The party also asked JCD ex-vice presidents Javed Hasan Swadhin, Tarun De, former JCD  joint secretaries Tariqul Islam Titu, Ferdous Ahmed Munna and ex-assistant general secretary Rakibul Islam Royal to show causes appearing in person at BNP's Nayapaltan central office by 5pm on Tuesday over the allegation of their involvement in activities contrary to party discipline.
The action was taken against the rebel JCD men nearly 20 days after the aggrieved JCD activists, deprived of posts in its new committee, postponed their demonstrations and sit-in programmes in front of their Nayapaltan central office following a fruitful meeting with BNP Acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
The JCD feud persists since announcement of the new leadership on October 14, as the dropouts of the new body continued to agitate. At one stage, the party's Naya Paltan headquarters came under attack by the aggrieved group.
Despite attempts to appease the group by Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and Mirza Abbas, Dhaka city unit convenor, who met the protesters several times, they failed to make them accept the new arrangement.
Later, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia assigned Mirza Abbas to resolve the crisis.
Mirza Abbas met some of the rebel leaders, including Ishaque Sarker, the organising secretary of the newly-formed JCD committee, at his Shahjahanpur office in the city several times, but the attempts turned out to be a futile.
On Friday, the vehicles carrying BNP's Student Affairs Secretary Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anee and Assistant Secretary Sultan Salahuddin Tuku came under attack by the JCD aggrieved group. The two leaders were going to the grave of the BNP founder Ziaur Rahman to pay their respect.
Party insider said though the BNP high-ups were trying to find an amicable solution to the problem, the attack on Anee and Tuku's vehicle prompted them to take the action to avoid repetition of such incident and restore discipline.