After Tasnim Jara, now Tajnuva Jabeen resigns from NCP

Tajnuva Jabeen has announced her resignation as joint convener of the National Citizen Party (NCP) and said she will not be contesting the upcoming general election.

She made the announcement in a Facebook post today (28 December), objecting to the party's potential move to form an alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Last night, NCP leader Tasnim Jara resigned as the party's senior joint member secretary and announced that she would contest the upcoming election as an independent candidate from Dhaka-9.

The move comes after 30 leaders of the NCP formally objected to the party's reported move to forge an electoral alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami-led eight-party alliance, submitting a letter of protest to NCP Convener Nahid Islam.

Earlier this month, the NCP announced a preliminary list of candidates for 125 constituencies for the upcoming election. According to that list, Tajnuva was supposed to contest the polls from Dhaka-17.

Tajnuva said in her post that many had assumed her objection was based on ideological or gender-related concerns regarding Jamaat, but argued that the manner in which the alliance had been forged was far more troubling.

"This is being framed as a political strategy or an electoral alliance. I would say it was planned. It was carefully engineered and brought to this point," she wrote.

She said that after the NCP invited nationwide nominations and nominated 125 aspirants, it was now sealing a seat-sharing deal for only 30 constituencies, effectively barring others from contesting the polls.

The process had been deliberately delayed until the final stage so that even independent candidacies became impossible, with the nomination submission deadline looming, she added.

The former NCP leader also questioned the urgency of entering an electoral alliance in the party's very first election, arguing that it should have first established its own political identity before aligning with any force.

"I had thought I would resign after the formal announcement of the alliance... But yesterday, everyone confirmed that the alliance has already been finalised. And I reiterate that my resignation is not so much because of the alliance itself, but because of the process through which it was formed."

"I will return the donations you have sent, one by one. Please give me some time. I will share a detailed update on how the refunds will be made gradually," she added.

In another Facebook post later in the day, she said, "One more thing: I have left the NCP, not politics.

"They did not wage even a single struggle that is required to reach parliament," Tajnuva said, adding that without struggle and resistance, going to parliament is not sustainable, nor is becoming a true public representative.

"I want something sustainable. With this resignation, my real struggle begins. This is not the end of my politics; it is the beginning."