On October 5, 2026, political leaders, rights activists, journalists and civil society representatives gathered at Shahbag in Dhaka to demand the cancellation of the New CHT Committees created by the government. Organised by the CHT Accord Implementation Movement, the rally delivered a direct message: Bangladesh already has a political framework for resolving the CHT problem, and that framework is the 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord.
The rally was conducted by Dipayan Khisa and chaired by the movement’s joint coordinator Zakir Hossain. Speakers included veteran journalist and freedom fighter Abu Sayeed Khan, ALRD Executive Director Shamsul Huda, Bangladesh JaSaD General Secretary Nazmul Huq Pradhan, former CPB General Secretary Ruhin Hossain Prince, Santoshit Chakma Bakul of the India-Returnee Jumma Refugees Welfare Association, Jatin Bihari Chakma representing CHT civil society and Wasim Rahman Tanmoy from Manusher Jonno Foundation. Representatives from Rangamati, Khagrachhari and other sections of civil society were also present.
The importance of the gathering goes beyond its size. Opposition to the government’s new CHT policy is no longer confined to Indigenous organisations or protests inside the hills. The question has reached Dhaka: why is a political conflict that already has a negotiated settlement being placed under another security-heavy administrative structure?
The government created three bodies on September 10: the National Committee on Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs, the Executive Committee on Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs and the Consultative Committee on Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs. The controversy is not simply about the creation of more committees. It is about who has been given power and who has been left mainly to advise.
The National Committee is chaired by the prime minister, while the Executive Committee is headed by the home secretary. Military, intelligence and security institutions occupy important positions in both. The Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, or DGFI, has an especially powerful role: its director general serves as member-secretary of the National Committee and chief coordinator of the Executive Committee.
The Consultative Committee is different. Institutions from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, including the Regional Council and the three Hill District Councils, receive greater representation there, but the committee’s main function is to provide recommendations. In simple terms, the bodies dominated by the central government and security establishment shape policy and strategy, while the committee with stronger CHT representation mainly advises.
The Executive Committee’s mandate makes the issue even more serious. It has been tasked with preparing a national strategy dealing with terrorism, separatism, border security, communal harmony and development in the CHT. It may also review existing laws, rules and provisions of agreements and recommend amendments or reforms.
This is why Indigenous communities are alarmed. Bangladesh certainly has the right to confront armed groups, extortion, illegal weapons and crime, but those problems should not be used to redefine the entire CHT question as a security problem. The 1997 Accord was signed precisely because decades of military and security-centred policies had failed to produce a lasting political solution.
I examined the structure and implications of the three committees in greater detail in my Times of Israel article, “Is Bangladesh Turning the CHT Accord Into a Security Issue?”
The Shahbag rally shows that concern over this new structure is now spreading beyond the hills.
Bangladesh does not need to invent another political framework for the CHT. The Accord already strengthened the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council and the three Hill District Councils and created mechanisms to deal with land disputes, refugees, internally displaced people and other consequences of the long conflict. The real failure has been the refusal to make those institutions fully effective.
Abu Sayeed Khan addressed a deeper problem at the rally: the mindset that the people of the hills have already been given too much. That attitude has followed the Accord for decades. Rights promised through a peace agreement are not gifts from the state, and implementation cannot be treated as an act of generosity.
Shamsul Huda also questioned the bureaucratic and intelligence-heavy nature of the new structure. His concern goes to the heart of the problem. Intelligence agencies may collect information and security forces may respond to threats, but neither can settle disputed land, restore political trust or fulfil commitments made through a peace agreement.
Ruhin Hossain Prince raised another fundamental point: the CHT Accord was not signed with one political party. It was signed with the State of Bangladesh. Governments may change and political parties may alternate in power, but the obligations of the state do not disappear after an election.
That argument is particularly relevant under the present BNP government. The political process that eventually produced the Accord did not begin in 1997. During the BNP government in the early 1990s, thirteen rounds of formal talks were held with the PCJSS, and when the BNP returned to office in 2001 it also took some steps connected with implementation. The Accord therefore cannot honestly be dismissed as somebody else’s political inheritance.
The Shahbag rally presented eight demands, including cancellation of the three new committees, reconstitution of Accord-related bodies, removal of the non-Hill state minister from the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs, a time-bound roadmap for implementation, activation of the Land Commission, policy-level dialogue with the Regional Council and broader dialogue on land and other unresolved issues.
These demands do not ask the government to create something new. They ask Bangladesh to make existing institutions work. Another committee cannot resolve a land dispute, transfer authority to the Regional Council or rebuild confidence among Indigenous communities if the institutions created through the Accord remain weak.
The government therefore faces a clear choice. It can complete the political settlement reached in 1997, strengthen the institutions created under it and resolve the remaining disputes through dialogue. Or it can surround the Accord with new bureaucratic and security structures until its political meaning is gradually hollowed out.
The October 5 rally at Shahbag was therefore more than another protest. It was a warning from beyond the hills that the present approach is producing distrust instead of confidence and parallel structures instead of implementation.
Bangladesh does not need another committee to understand what must be done in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The agreement was signed nearly three decades ago. What is missing is not another structure, but the political will to implement it.