BNP Standing Committee Member Major (retd) Hafizuddin Ahmed on Sunday said his party would include any aspirant member from Awami League (AL) if he maintains a good character.

However, BNP leaders will retain their leadership roles, he asserted while addressing a party gathering at his constituency in Tazumuddin upazila of Bhola.

BNP has to grow further with new members, and if that member would be a good AL man, who has not harmed anyone, BNP would welcome him, Hafizuddin said.

Otherwise, the good AL men would "join other parties, and campaign against BNP," he said.

While including the good men from AL, a banned political party, into BNP, the party leadership would also expel two-four people of their own activists due to their “bad character,” Hafizuddin said.

He also “cautioned” partymen that a “religion-based party” was trying to delay the general elections slated for February, because it knows it has “no chance of winning.”

He also specifically mentioned that "loyalists of Jamaat-e-Islami" have filled up the top ranks at public universities and the Secretariat since the ouster of Awami League from power in last year's uprising.

BNP does not rely on any “bureaucratic or vested group” and rather needs only people’s vote to win, the BNP leader said.