Staff Correspondent    
Five members of BNP's standing committee have sent a letter to the chief election commissioner to request that Khandaker Delwar Hossain be invited to the electoral reform dialogue as the party's "legal secretary general", a party leader said Sunday.

A delegation, led by the party's pro-Delwar faction joint secretary general Nazrul Islam Khan, met with election chief ATM Shamsul Huda Sunday and handed him the letter.

Khan told reporters afterwards that the letter said if Delwar was not issued an invite as the party's secretary general the responsibility for a divided BNP would fall on the Election Commission.

"We have requested the chief election commissioner to invite the legal secretary general Khandaker Delwar to the dialogue. He is the legal secretary general. The claim by any other person is wrong."

"BNP won majority seats in the last parliament. We hope that the Election Commission will not take any final decision without discussions involving the party," Khan said.

"The CEC has asked us to be united. We told him that we want to be united. But as long as the party is not united, letters have to be sent to the legal secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain and all contacts made with him."

In reply to a question, he added that if BNP was invited by the government it would certainly participate in the pre-dialogue talks.

Khan said of the 12-member standing committee, three are now in jail and six out of eight are with the "mainstream party".

Sunday's delegation included joint secretary general Goyeshwar Chandra Roy and former lawmaker Mehedi Ahmed Rumi.

Election commissioners Muhammed Sohul Hussain and M Sakhawat Hussain were also present during the meeting.

BNP standing committee members Dr RA Gani, Abdul Matin Chowdhury, Chowdhury Tanveeer Ahmed Siddiqui, Adv Khandaker Mahbubuddin Ahmad and M Shamsul Isam signed the letter that was handed over to the CEC.

The letter said appointment of the party's former vice president Hafizuddin Ahmed as acting secretary general in the "so-called standing committee meeting of Oct 29" was against the party constitution.

The CEC has been requested not to take into cognizance the decision of that meeting, and send any communications to Khandaker Delwar.

The letter also mentioned that the decision by chairperson Khaleda Zia on Sept 2, after her arrest, to expel Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan from the post of secretary general and cancel his primary membership of the party was constitutional.