With the resignation of founding leader Samanta Shermeen, the National Citizen Party (NCP) is once again facing a question that emerged when it formed an electoral alliance with Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami: Is the party losing its independent identity in Jamaat’s shadow?
Shermeen, who resigned on Thursday in protest against the alliance, alleged that NCP, which emerged from the July mass uprising, was increasingly playing a supportive role for Jamaat on various political issues.
NCP leaders, however, maintain that neither the electoral understanding nor the party’s organisational restructuring has changed its independent political position.
Formed by young leaders who emerged from the July uprising, NCP initially promised a new kind of politics. Shermeen was the spokesperson for the Jatiya Nagorik Committee before becoming a senior convener of the party.
Ahead of the 13th parliamentary election in February this year, NCP leaders were divided over an alliance with Jamaat. While many opposed it because of Jamaat’s role in the Liberation War and its failure to apologise, others favoured the partnership.
In the final week of December 2025, Tasnim Jara, then the party’s senior joint member secretary, resigned amid seat-sharing negotiations with Jamaat.
NCP sources told TIMES at the time that she had strongly opposed the alliance. The party had nominated her for Dhaka-9 in the national election, but she later left the party and contested as an independent candidate.
Tajnuva Jabeen, then an NCP joint convener, also left the party over the alliance and subsequently withdrew from the election.
In a Facebook post, she described the alliance process as “planned” and alleged that other political options had gradually been closed off, leaving the party with no alternative.
Criticising Jamaat’s ideology, she wrote, “Seeking to become an MP from the very beginning through an understanding with those who did not even want this country or this parliament, and accepting their leadership, is impossible for me.”
NCP eventually joined Jamaat in contesting the election as part of its alliance, winning six seats. However, some party leaders remain unhappy with the decision.
On Thursday, Shermeen sent her resignation letter to convener Nahid Islam, stepping down as joint convener.
Her resignation came two weeks after she was demoted in the reconstituted committee and excluded from the party’s new political council.
In her resignation statement, Shermeen alleged that NCP was being swallowed up by Jamaat because it lacked a clear political line of its own and was playing a reactive, supportive role for the party on various issues.
She said Jamaat did not genuinely subscribe to democratic reform politics and that the alliance had pushed NCP away from its own political identity and reform agenda.
She argued that the 2026 election could have centred on the political changes sought after the uprising. Instead, joining the 11-party alliance had made NCP dependent on a larger political force, undermining its scope to pursue an independent political path.
Sarwar Tushar, a member of the NCP’s political council, dismissed the allegations as Shermeen’s personal perceptions. Asked whether the party was losing its identity in Jamaat’s shadow, he told TIMES that NCP had maintained an independent political position from the beginning.
Defending the committee restructuring, Tushar said it had been necessary because new members had joined after the election while some existing members had become inactive. He said the party’s council would be held in February and that no president or general secretary had been appointed ahead of it.
On women’s leadership, Tushar said the party had two female MPs and a separate women’s organisation. He said Shermeen had been treated as a leader without distinction on the basis of gender, accusing her of playing the “women’s card” in her resignation statement.
Nusrat Tabassum, member secretary of the NCP’s women’s organisation Jatiya Nari Shakti, also rejected Shermeen’s allegations.
“She might not have an accurate picture of the party’s current situation as she had been inactive over the past year,” Tabassum told TIMES, adding that women held important positions in the party’s affiliated organisations and district committees.
