The 75th birthday of Prime Minister and Bangladesh Awami League President Sheikh Hasina is being celebrated across the country today (28 September).
Sheikh Hasina, the eldest among the five children of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib, was born at Tungipara in Gopalganj on September 28 in 1947.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is now in the USA as she went there to join the 76th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Following the footprint of Bangabandhu, she also delivered speech in Bangla at the UNGA like the previous years.
This year the UN-sponsored Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) has conferred Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina with “SDG Progress Award” for Bangladesh’s steady course in responding to the universal call to take action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure peace and prosperity for all.
The event’s moderator introduced Sheikh Hasina as the “jewel in the crown of the day” while appreciating her leadership in spearheading the SDG campaign even during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Like the previous years, Awami League (AL) and its affiliated and likeminded bodies will celebrate the day through various programmes highlighting the life and achievements of Sheikh Hasina, who is driving the nation towards prosperity following the footstep of her father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
On the occasion, discussions, milad and doa mahfils and special prayers will be organized in the capital and across the country, with maintaining health guidelines in view of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sheikh Hasina spent much of her childhood in the small hamlet where she was born. She started her schooling there. When Bangabandhu was elected a legislator, his family moved to Dhaka in 1954.
She was admitted to what is now Sher-e-Bangla Girls’ School and College and later to Azimpur Girls’ High School from where she completed her secondary education in 1965. She was then admitted to Badrunnessa Government
Girls’ College.
During her bachelor course, she was elected as the vice-president of the students’ union of Eden Girls’ College (Badrunnessa and Eden Girls’ College was a single entity during the period).
Later, she enrolled in her Masters’ programme at Bengali Department of Dhaka University.
As a student leader, Sheikh Hasina actively took part in the six-point movement of 1966 and the student movement of 1969 which saw the abdication of General Ayub Khan.
In 1968, with the blessings of her imprisoned father, Sheikh Hasina who is leading the country as the Prime Minister for the third consecutive term, got married to nuclear scientist Dr Wazed Miah.
During the Liberation War, Sheikh Hasina and her family were interned in a house in Dhaka. On July 27 in 1971, her first child Sajeeb Wazed Joy was born. Her second child Saima Wazed Hossain was born on December 9, 1972.
After the assassination of her parents in 1975, Sheikh Hasina and her family were offered political asylum in India, where she stayed till 1981 when she was elected as the president of the Awami League in her absence.
Sheikh Hasina returned home on May 17, 1981 when she was greeted by a mammoth crowd that extended from the Airport to Farm Gate and Manik Miah Avenue and she addressed a public rally.
In the 1986 parliamentary election, Sheikh Hasina was elected as parliament member from three different constituencies. After the overthrow of autocracy in 1990, she was elected as the Leader of the Opposition in the House.
