The government plans to amend the Battalion Ansar Act to reduce time limit of regularising service of an embodied Ansar as a battalion Ansar to six years. Ansar has two categories of members—battalion Ansars and embodied Ansars. At present, the latter category gets permanent service status after nine years.
Talking to The Independent, a senior officer of Bangladesh Ansar said they are amending the existing Act as per the directive of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The officer said that the home ministry has prepared a proposal in this regard, which would be placed at a cabinet meeting today.
“After getting the Cabinet’s approval, it would be sent to the parliamentary secretariat for tabling it in the next session of Parliament,” he added. The proposed amendment comes two years after the government amended the Battalion Ansar (Amendment) Act 2015, keeping the provision of capital punishment, as in the the Border Guard Bangladesh Act, in case of any kind of mutiny in the force. Also today, the draft Social Organisation Registration Act 2017 is likely to be placed at the Cabinet meeting to monitor the organisation.
Bangladesh Ansar, combined with the Village Defence Party (VDP), is the largest government organisation comprising of regular forces and volunteers. It had been inherited from the Home Guards of British era and could successfully make remarkable contribution in achieving independence of Bangladesh in 1971. Their main jobs are to work in aid to the government or any authority under the government in issues relating to human security or any other works related to security and to take part in any work related to public welfare. Augmenting Bangladesh Army, Navy, Air Force, BGB and police and to participate in disaster preparedness and mitigation are also their jobs. In another development, the environment and the forest ministry has prepared a proposal to cut hundreds of trees from Gazipur’s Sripur and Joydevpur areas to implement the gas distribution pipeline of Titas Gas Limited.