Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader has claimed the verdict against BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia would intensify the party's internal feuds.
The road transport and bridges minister made the remarks on Friday while replying to a recent statement of BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
Fakhrul had said the imprisonment of Khaleda Zia would deepen the current political crisis.
In reply, Obaidul Quader said, "The verdict would not create any crisis in the political arena, rather it would intensify the internal feuds in BNP."
The minister was talking with the newsmen after visiting a rapid bus transit project on Bhogra bypass in Gazipur on Friday.
Former prime minister Khaleda Zia was sentenced to 5-year imprisonment on Thursday of misappropriating foreign funds donated to an orphanage trust.
BNP senior vice-chairman Tarique Rahman was also sentenced with four others in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case.
Talking about declaring Tarique as acting chief of BNP, Obaidul said, it is now crystal clear why BNP abolished Section 7 from its constitution.
"Now there is no bar in BNP's constitution for corrupt and convicted persons to be leader of this party," he added.
Obaidul Quader said BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia herself and her "experienced lawyers" delayed the judicial procedure on various excuses.
"If Begum Zia appeared before the court regularly, the verdict would come much ago," he added.
Superintending Engineer of Roads and Highways Department (Dhaka circle) Engineer Sabuj Uddin Khan, Gazipur Superintendant of Police Mohammad Harun-or-Rashid, Gazipur City AL President Ajmat Ullah Khan and General Secretary Jahangir Alam, among others, were present at that time.
