The newly elected members of parliament of the BNP have taken oath in the 13th National Parliament election. Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin administered the oath to the members of parliament at 10:40 am today (Tuesday, February 17) in the oath-taking room of the Parliament building.

Meanwhile, the cabinet oath-taking will be held at 4 pm at the South Plaza of the Parliament Building. After the landslide victory of the BNP in the 13th parliamentary elections, party chairman Tarique Rahman will take oath as the prime minister of the new government.

Besides, although the Parliament Secretariat has informed about the separate oath-taking as members of the Constituent Assembly, BNP MPs may not take the oath today, according to party sources.

After nearly two decades of Bangladesh being without democracy, the BNP is set to assume power for the sixth time. The party, which won two-thirds of the seats in the historic February 12 election, is set to form the government today.

Twenty years after Khaleda Zia ended her term as Prime Minister in 2006, her son Tarique Rahman is set to take oath as Prime Minister. He is the architect of BNP's landslide victory. Earlier, Tarique Rahman was also the architect behind BNP's landslide victory on October 1, 2001.

The oath-taking of 296 MPs published in the gazette will be held at the Parliament House this morning. Although elections were held in 299 seats of the 300-seat parliament, the results of two seats have not been gazetted. The two seats are Chittagong-2 and Chittagong-4. In addition, due to the death of the Jamaat candidate, elections were not held in Sherpur-3. Apart from this, only Tarique Rahman has contested in Dhaka-17 and Bogra-6 seats and won both. As per the rules, he gave up one seat, Bogra-6, yesterday. He will take oath as the MP of Dhaka-17 today.

Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin will conduct the oath-taking ceremony for the MPs. According to the constitution, if the outgoing Speaker and Deputy Speaker are unable to administer the oath within three days of the publication of the gazette, the Chief Election Commissioner will perform this duty.

As outgoing Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury resigned and Deputy Speaker Shamsul Haque Tuku is in jail in a murder case, they will not be able to take the oath within three days of the gazette publication. According to the constitution, President Mohammad Shahabuddin will administer the oath to the Prime Minister and ministers of the new government. The ceremony will be conducted by newly appointed Cabinet Secretary Nasimul Gani.

After the oath-taking ceremony in the morning, MPs from various parties and alliances, including BNP-Jamaat, will meet to elect their parliamentary party leaders. Among those elected as parliamentary party leaders, the President will invite the leader of the majority party to form the government.

Several BNP sources have confirmed that they are going to elect party chairman Tarique Rahman as the leader of the parliamentary party. As a result, the President will formally invite Tarique Rahman to form the government. After receiving this letter, Tarique Rahman will send the list of his cabinet members. The Cabinet Division will send the cars allocated to the ministers to each one.

Various sources say that initially, a maximum of 30 ministers and state ministers can take the oath in the cabinet.

BNP elected 209 MPs in the recently held parliamentary elections. Of these, the seat from Bogra-6 was declared vacant after Tarique Rahman resigned. The gazette publication of these two seats is suspended as the loan default issues of Sarwar Alamgir, the winner of Chittagong-2, and Aslam Chowdhury, the winner of Chittagong-4, are in court.

BNP may invite three MPs from its alliance partners, Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) Chairman Barrister Andalib Rahman Partha, Mass Solidarity Movement Coordinator Jonayed Saki, and People's Rights Council President and former DUCSU VP Nurul Haque Nur, to its parliamentary party meeting. All three may be invited as state ministers in the cabinet.

Apart from the election of the leader, the BNP parliamentary party meeting is scheduled to elect a deputy leader (with ministerial rank), chief whip and six whips. Salahuddin Ahmed's name is being heard as the deputy leader of the parliament.

The Jamaat-e-Islami alliance, which is going to sit in the opposition seat, will invite its alliance partners to their parliamentary party meeting. There, the opposition leader, deputy leader, chief whip and whip will be elected. The opposition leader enjoys the status of a minister.