National Citizen Party (NCP) Convener and opposition Chief Whip Nahid Islam has accused the BNP government of pushing Bangladesh’s energy sector into a deepening crisis through “incompetence, lack of planning and mafia appeasement,” as he called for an immediate halt to moves to expand private control over fuel imports and distribution.

“Bangladesh has already paid the price of appeasing mafias once — never again,” Nahid said in a Facebook post, warning that the NCP would resist policies favouring powerful business groups.

Nahid said load-shedding reached 3,757 megawatts at 1:00am on August 10, surpassing the previous record of 3,671 MW a day earlier and 3,512 MW on August 3.

“The word ‘load-shedding’ is once again becoming synonymous with the BNP government,” he said.

According to Nahid, 41 power plants are currently shut down, electricity imports from India have fallen by nearly half and rural areas are experiencing outages lasting 10 to 14 hours a day.

He also accused the government of deliberately weakening the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) to pave the way for private companies to enter the refined fuel market.

“Don’t let the state-owned institution do its job → let a crisis develop → say ‘the public sector can’t do it’ → hand licences to private oligarchs,” he said.

Nahid cited media reports that Bashundhara Oil and Gas had sought government permission to import large quantities of refined petroleum products and market them independently.

He said the Energy and Mineral Resources Division subsequently instructed BPC on August 6 to prepare within four days a draft policy governing the private-sector import, storage, transportation, distribution and marketing of refined petroleum products.

Nahid also linked the issue to the removal of the BPC chairman, alleging that he was “unfairly removed” after opposing the proposal.

“Giving ‘four days’ to draft a nationally important energy policy that affects the public interest is the BNP’s model of good governance!” he said.

Nahid also raised questions over the July 21 fire at Excelerate Energy’s floating LNG terminal at Maheshkhali, which he said disrupted 510 million cubic feet of daily gas supply. Partial supply was restored on August 5, 15 days later.

He demanded an independent investigation into whether maintenance failures contributed to the incident and questioned Bangladesh’s disaster-recovery capacity when one of two terminals responsible for roughly a quarter of the country’s gas supply went offline.

Calling energy a matter of national security, Nahid demanded that the government suspend what he described as a “hurried privatisation process.”

“The government’s first responsibility is to the people, not to any business group,” he said. “Because of the government’s incompetence, lack of planning and policy of appeasing mafias, the sector is now in a deep crisis.”