In an unprecedented move, the interim government is deleting public documents from the official websites to erase records of the ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure from 2009 to August 2024.
Websites of 25 ministries and divisions have already been cleaned up of Hasina’s regime. Other ministries and divisions are also deleting files or blocking from their sites as per an instruction of the Cabinet Division.
The process began after the fall of the Hasina’s Awami League government on 5 August 2024 with the removal of profiles, photos and videos of Hasina and country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
As there had been many such contents of the ousted prime minister, her ministers and party leaders still in remaining, the Cabinet Division’s e-governance branch issued a circular on 24 April this year to completely clean up the records of the past regime.
“Unnecessary and praising information, photographs and videos of the past government are still in many websites of ministries, divisions, directorates, institutions, divisions, districts, upazilas and unions under the Bangladesh National Portal. As those websites are not updated yet access to information of citizens are being interrupted in one hand and damaging reputation of the government on the other,” reads of the circular signed by Senior Assistant Secretary Sheikh Zobayer Ahmed.
He instructed all the offices – from the ministry to the union parishad – to update those materials, which means deleting.
An annual report of a ministry, division or a department contains information including activities, plans, achievements and budgets for a financial year and is usually compared to previous year’s achievement, activities and other issues and plans.
Deleting the vital public information is a violation of the Right to Information Act (RTI) 2009 as it denies citizens, journalists, researchers access to the government documents.
TIMES of Bangladesh reviewed 55 sites of ministries and divisions and found that many of the sites are empty. For example, ministries of foreign affairs, defence, railways and home affairs are having no data. So are the power, energy and mineral resources division, road transport and highways division, bridges division and armed force division.
The website of the President’s Office’s public division and personal division are also found empty.
Ministry of Education’s Secondary and Higher Education Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s Health Services Division, Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs’ Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division, and Ministry of Planning’s Statistics and Informatics Division do not also contain any record of Hasina and her government.
The link for the annual report for Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology’s Posts and Telecommunications Division is inaccessible, showing ‘404’ and reading “The page you are looking for doesn’t exist or has been moved.”
Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources’ Power Division and Energy and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges’s Road Transport and Highways Division and Bridge Division do not have any annual report of the past government.
Likewise, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Housing and Public Works, Ministry of Industries, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Textiles and Jute, and Ministry of Women and Children Affairs do not have any single annual report of the previous government.
“When an official from Cabinet Division gives directives, you have no alternative but to comply,” said a system analyst whose role involves overseeing a ministry’s website. “She repeatedly called me for two days, even after office hours to clean up Hasina’s reward.”
Power Division’s system analyst Humayun Kabir told TIMES that after the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August, an official from the cabinet division asked him to bring down everything from the previous government.
“According to the directives, we have deleted the annual reports,” he said.
However, 30 ministries and divisions are still keeping the previous government annual reports on their websites.
Mahfuj Alam, one of the key organisers of the student-led mass uprising which overthrew Hasina, is overseeing Ministry of Information and Broadcasting but it is still keeping the previous governments annual reports with the pictures of Hasina.
Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan, another key organiser now overseeing Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives and Ministry of Youth and Sports have not deleted the Hasina regime’s annual reports.
Local Government Division’s system analyst Shafiqul Islam and Ministry of Youth & Sports system analyst ASM Hosne Mubarak said that they did not get any instructions directly from Cabinet Division, hence they have kept the annual reports intact.
Two advisers and the cabinet secretary claimed to have no information about the removal of annual reports.
Adviser Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan claimed he was not aware of the fact that there were no annual reports of the previous government on the websites of the ministry. Adviser Wahiuddin Mahmud said no decision ever made in the Advisory Council to remove annual reports from the websites.
“We have not asked [anyone] to remove [annual reports],” said Cabinet Secretary Sheikh Abdur Rashid.
Transparency International Bangladesh’s executive director Iftekharuzzaman said that if the government finds anything unnecessary or damaging for the country, the government could remove that part of the annual reports, not the entire report.
“When the government is expected to proactively disclose information as per the Rights of Information Act, and if it does not do so, then the government itself is breaking the law,” he said.
“The government should retrieve the deleted annual reports and blur the portions it deems objectionable,” he added.
