Awami League (AL) General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader today urged the students, who are agitating to scrap the quota system in government service, to go back to their respective educational institutions stopping their movement that creates huge public sufferings.

The government must take legal actions if anyone tries to capitalize on the emotion of innocent students and tries to create anarchy across the country, he said while addressing a press briefing at the AL President’s Office in city’s Dhanmondi here.

Quader said BNP wants to turn the anti-quota movement into anti-government agitations. But, Awami League would never allow them to do it, he said, adding, “We will face it politically if anyone tries to give the anti-quota movement a political shape.”

He said the women have gone backward in absence of quota system in the last five years. The ethnic groups also suffered a lot. Quota system plays an important role in building the state system on basis of diversity and equality, he added.

He said quota does not create discrimination rather it is needed in some sectors to resolve the discrimination. The highest court has given a status quo for four weeks over the quota system, he said.

But the AL general secretary said, it is very regretful that efforts were going on to disrupt the normal life of people in the name of ‘Bangla Blockade’. Even they are not showing respect to the country’s highest court, he added.

On the other hand, Quader said, some political parties are instigating the innocent students. Even, BNP and some other parties have expressed their support to the movement while Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir claimed that there is no need of the Freedom Fighter Quota, he said.

He said BNP has no respect to the Liberation War and there is no reason to think that BNP believes in the spirit of the Liberation War.

AL Joint General Secretaries Mahabub-ul Alam Hanif and AFM Bahauddin Nasim, Organizing Secretaries BM Mozammel Haque, SM Kamal Hossain, Afzal Hossain and Sujit Roy Nandi, Relief and Social Welfare Affairs Secretary Aminul Islam Amin, Office Secretary Barrister Biplob Barua, Liberation War Affairs Secretary Mrinal Kanti Das, and Deputy Office Secretary Sayeem Khan, among others, were present.