Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday called upon her party men to work together to gear up the pace of development and take a vow to build a Bangladesh as dreamt by Bangabandhu.
"Bangabandhu is no more amongst us, but we have his ideology. We are trying to build up the country according to the guidelines he gave at a public meeting at Suhrawardy Udyan after his return home on January 10, 1972," she said.
"So it's our pledge to our Father of the Nation to build a prosperous nation as dreamt by him," she said while addressing as the chair of a discussion on 'Bangabandhu's Homecoming Day' at Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC) here.
Bangladesh Awami League organized the discussion marking the return of Bangabandhu from nine months of Pakistani captivity on this day in 1972 after Bangladesh won independence on December 16, 1971 through a bloody war against Pakistan.
Recalling the memories of the return of Bangabandhu from Pakistan imprisonment in 1972, the Prime Minister, also the eldest daughter of Bangabandhu, said she first came to know of his release from BBC news followed by a telephone call from London.
"Before that we were in the dark about whether he was dead or alive. As we heard the BBC news our pleasure knew no bounds," she said adding that Bangladesh's liberation was completed through his return home, making way to materialize the aspirations of the people.
Sheikh Hasina said the anti-liberation forces killed Bangabandhu at a time when he took initiatives for area-based development of the country through administrative decentralization and uniting the people of all strata, reports BSS.
"The killers of Bangabandhu took away 36 years from the life of the people of Bangladesh pushing the country backward, introducing a farcical democracy in collusion with the anti-liberation elements and under the purview of military rule and curfew," she said.
"We have made Bangladesh a role model of development within nine years," she said asking why the post-1975 governments failed to do so in 36 years. She said no political party other than Awami League can do anything better for welfare and economic progress of the people of Bangladesh.
Central leaders of the party Amir Hossain Amu, Tofail Ahmed, Matiya Chowdhury, Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim and Engineer Mosharraf Hossain, and Bangabandhu Professor of Dhaka University Muntasir Mamun took part in the discussion.
Publicity Secretary of the party Dr Hasan Mahmud and Deputy Publicity Secretary Aminul Islam conducted the meeting addressed, among others, by general secretaries of the party's Dhaka North and Dhaka South units Sadek Khan and Shah Alam Murad.