DHAKA, June 28: Some 20 people were injured on Saturday in clashes between baton-wielding police and rowdy activists from the Awami League during a general strike over Bangladesh’s budget, witnesses said.

They said police used batons and fired teargas to ward off stone-throwing activists who tried to torch an effigy of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s candidate for the top post of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and block a major road.

The Awami League has called for Chowdhury to withdraw his candidacy, charging that the ruling party MP and advisor to the prime minister on parliamentary affairs has a “controversial” past. The government rejected the plea.

“We were forced to use batons after the activists threw stones and tried to block the major Mirpur road,” a police officer in Dhanmandi station told AFP.

He said 16 activists, including two women, were detained, although no charges were immediately pressed against them. Witnesses said 20 were injured.

Some 500 activists had tried to march under the monsoon rain onto Mirpur road in Dhanmandi, the area of the capital where Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed resides.

Sporadic clashes were reported from other areas of Dhaka and nearby Savar district.

Home Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury told the parliament that 62 activists were detained during the strike.

The opposition called the strike in protest at Bangladesh’s proposed national budget, which it says is “pro-rich”. The budget is due to come up for a vote in parliament Sunday.

The budget, unveiled earlier this month by Finance Minister Saifur Rahman, is worth 519.8 billion taka (8.96 billion dollars), an 18.4 percent rise in spending from the outgoing year.

Schools, most private offices and businesses were shut in Dhaka, although inter-city bus and train services were functioning, with buses and taxis avoiding potential troublespots.

The strike also affected Bangladesh’s second city Chittagong.

Strikes are a frequent political tactic in Bangladesh, with Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) also regularly calling shutdowns when Sheikh Hasina was in power.

Zia and Sheikh Hasina have a bitter rivalry, which political commentators say is a hurdle to the development of Bangladesh’s fledgling democracy.

The New Age daily newspaper said Saturday there have been 1,193 strikes since Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Sheikh Hasina was behind 416 general strikes when Zia was in power between 1991 and 1996, while Zia carried out 318 when Sheikh Hasina was prime minister from 1996 to 2001.

It said the two called 328 general strikes during the nine-year iron-fisted rule of president Hussain Muhammad Ershad, a former army chief who was deposed in a 1990 mass pro-democracy campaign.

According to one study, each day of a general strike costs Bangladesh’s economy 3.86 billion taka (66.55 million dollars).

Saturday’s strike was the fourth held by the Awami League in a month. The party began an indefinite boycott of parliament Thursday over remarks made by a government minister against Sheikh Hasina.

The party says it would only return to the 300-member house after the speaker met its three-point demand, including expunging State Minister for Housing Alamgir Kabir’s comments and a formal apology from him.

Speaker Abdul Hamid Siddiqui said the minister’s comments have already been expunged but that the BNP had to decide whether the minister would apologise.—AFP