The top leadership of BNP has warned the leaders of the party's front and associate organisations that they will lose their posts if they fail to hit the street during an upcoming anti-government movement to be announced soon.

Besides, it said those taking to the street would be awarded with important posts.

The message was communicated to the leaders during a meeting at the party chairperson's Gulshan office last night. It was the third of three meetings convened to decide BNP strategy ahead of the 2023 general election, meeting sources told The Daily Star last night.

A total of 95 leaders were invited to the meeting and Tarique Rahman, now in London, chaired it virtually.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told the meeting that the party's standing committee meeting tomorrow might decide whether the series of meetings would continue as the leadership was yet to meet the party's district-level leaders, the sources said.

The sources also said the party's top brass was very annoyed at what the other leaders said at the meeting.

"You all are talking about movement. You are talking about strengthening the organisations. Who will do these? You should do these," a source said, quoting a BNP leader as saying.

Another senior leader said they were once in the front and associate bodies, but they never said anything disrespecting their senior leaders.

"The party's acting chairman gave you two years time, but what did you do during the entire time?" another meeting source, quoted the senior leader as saying.

After a Jubo Dal leader asked why the front and associate bodies failed to form fully-fledged committees, another senior leader said, "Whenever any issue arises, you refer it to the acting chairman. You make mistakes and blame them on the acting chairman. Why?"  

Jubo Dal President Saiful Alam Nirob said the BNP was facing a crisis of activists and that Chhatra Dal and Sramik Dal should play a key role in overcoming the crisis.

Sramik Dal leaders requested the party to reform the organisation as early as possible.

The series of meetings is the first meeting of this scale since BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia landed in jail on February 8, 2018. It has also been the biggest meeting since Tarique Rahman became the acting chairman of the party.

Khaleda is currently out of jail after the government suspended her sentence. Tarique, who is facing several cases at home, is in London.