Left parties feel that the increase in allocation for religious education in the budget in Bangladesh is a loss of the spirit of independence

POBNEWS24, Dhaka, June 2, 2025 : Yunus government’s finance advisor Saleh Uddin Ahmed presented a budget of Tk 7,90,000 crore for the 2025-26 fiscal year through a speech on a TV channel on the afternoon of June 2. Tk 12,678 crore has been allocated for the technical and religious madrasa education department in the budget. The original budget for the current fiscal year had allocated Tk 11,783 crore for this sector. Accordingly, this time the budget allocation has increased by Tk 895 crore.
At 3 pm on Monday (June 2), finance advisor Dr. Saleh Uddin Ahmed presented the proposed budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Due to the absence of parliament, this year’s budget was broadcast simultaneously on state broadcaster BTV and other private media.
It is learned that the number of students in madrasas has been increasing in recent years, so the budget in this sector is also increasing.
According to government data, the number of students at the primary level, including pre-primary, was 25,46,091 in the 2022-23 fiscal year. According to the 2023-24 fiscal year, the number of madrasa students is 62,16,111.
The Finance Advisor said that the current enrollment rate in technical education is 19 percent. To increase it to 20 percent by 2025, women’s polytechnic and engineering colleges are being established at each divisional level, polytechnics at the district level, and technical schools at the upazila level.
He also said that for the development of madrasa education, the construction of 1,135 madrasa buildings has been completed and work on 513 multi-storey buildings is underway. Multimedia classrooms have been set up in 493 madrasas.
In addition, the Finance Advisor proposed to allocate Tk 728 crore for providing scholarships at the Ebtedayi level and MPO enrollment in madrasas. Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee Bangladesh to India on May 5 last year after being a victim of public anger. Since then, anti-independence forces in Bangladesh have become active. The activities of Islami Chhatra Shibir, Hefazat Islam, and Hizb ut Tahrir have increased. Their leaders and activists have escaped from prison and come out one after another. Now Bangladesh is completely under the control of anti-independence forces. Recently, the notorious Razakar Maulana Azahar of North Bengal has come out of prison. Not only this, the Supreme Court has also returned the registration of Jamaat. Its image has also surfaced in this budget. By increasing the expenditure on madrasa education. The Bangladesh Workers Party has commented that by returning the registration of Jamaat-e-Islam, it is an attempt to cover up the history of the misdeeds of the war criminal party of ’71. The Politburo of the Workers’ Party of Bangladesh said in a statement, “By revoking the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, an attempt has been made to cover up the history of the activities of the war criminal party of the Liberation War. The party’s involvement in the brutal activities of the Pak army in the great Liberation War of ’71, which robbed the honor of 3 million martyrs and 200,000 mothers and sisters, is intertwined with history. The brutal murderous forces of Al-Badr, Al-Shams, and Razakars were led by the leaders of that party. Unfortunately, as the looting ruling groups of this country did not run the country with the spirit and ideals of the Liberation War, the power of that darkness, fed by communist dollars and petrodollars and political Islam, has once again oppressed the nation. The party believes that although it has succeeded in restoring its old allies for the time being, the heroic freedom fighters of Bangladesh, the raped mothers, are still alive, their new generation of children are alive. There are those who will confront that evil force politically in the spirit of the Liberation War of 1971. They will destroy all the conspiracies of the communists. In the future politics, non-communal forces and democratic forces will unite and build Bangladesh in the spirit of the Liberation War – a humane Bangladesh of justice and equality, the Workers’ Party of Bangladesh believes.
On the other hand, regarding the budget, Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) President Comrade Mohammad Shah Alam and General Secretary Comrade Ruhin Hossain Prince said in a statement after the announcement of the budget for 2025-26 that this budget is the first budget of the interim government. As such, it is a budget prepared by an unelected government. Naturally, there is no scope for any structural fundamental changes in it. However, there was an opportunity to leave some footprints. But the budget could not show such a surprise. The expectation of the Yunus government to bring back the looted money and spend it on public welfare was not reflected in the budget.
In the statement, the leaders also said, ‘This time’s budget is not only conventional, but also unsurprising. In addition, this year’s budget has been a contractionary and recessionary budget. In this budget, the utmost importance has been given to controlling inflation and reducing expenditure by ‘tightening the belt’ as per the instructions of the IMF. The total budget size, total development expenditure, total debt flow, in short, the expansion of productive expenditure has not been given any attention in this budget. In order to reduce inequality, the budget will be made more anti-discrimination and dependent on internal resources by collecting wealth tax from the very rich. But in this regard, the budget has completely failed to do so due to the interest burden and failure to collect revenue.