The sacking of a key Dhaka administrator in 2022 followed by his March 2025 reinstatement to the office that he occupied three years ago is a prime instance of the disproportionate clout that an advisor to the Mohammad Yunus-led interim authority in Bangladesh wields.
Inquiries by Northeast News reveal that Major General (retd) Siddiqur Rahman Sarkar was appointed as the Dhaka Improvement Trust (DIT) chairman on April 4, 2024, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime was still in power.
Once the Yunus administration grabbed power on August 8, 2024, riding on the crest of the students’ movement, the interim authority issued an order on September 19, saying that Maj Gen Sarkar would no longer function as the DIT chairman. Maj Gen Rahman was appointed on a contractual basis.
Soon after the Yunus regime established itself in power, a former Deputy Attorney General Adilur Rahman Khan was appointed as advisor to the Housing and Public Works Ministry which also governs the functioning of DIT.
On September 22, 2024, Bangladesh’s Public Administration Ministry issued another order stating that its September 19 order, which had rescinded Maj Gen Sarkar’s contractual terms, stood rescinded. It added that Maj Gen Sarkar’s April 4, 2024, appointment now stood restored.
Both the September 22 and September 19, 2024, orders were signed by Senior Additional Secretary Nilufa Yasmin of the Public Administration ministry. Copies of both the order notifications were duly marked to the Cabinet Secretary and other senior officials in the interim regime. Copies of the two orders are in possession of Northeast News.
This “flip flop” was not a reflection of bureaucratic incompetence or inefficiency, but an instance of power play between Chief Advisor Mohammad Yunus and Adilur Rahman Khan.
While the latent tussle, if any, between Yunus and Adilur Rahman Khan has not come out in the open or found reflection publicly, Dhaka-based political observers said the latter “appears to have won the first round” by “getting rid of Maj Gen Sarkar” who was replaced vide a third order issued by the Public Administration ministry on March 8, 2025.
This order, signed by Deputy Secretary Touhid Bin Hasan, appointed an engineer, Mohammad Riyazul Islam, as the DIT chairman on contractual terms for two years. A copy of this order is also in possession of Northeast News.
This has prompted political observers in Dhaka to question whether real power in Bangladesh lay with Yunus or Adilur Rahman Khan who played a key role in the confabulations with US State Department and USAID officials both in the US and in Dhaka before the Sheikh Hasina regime was brought down as a consequence of the “regime change” operation by some officials of the Joe Biden administration.
