Govt to buy Rose Garden

The government is going to buy the historic Rose Garden mansion in Old Dhaka -- that was the birthplace of ruling party Awami League -- at about Tk 331.70 crore.

The cabinet committee on procurement in a meeting with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in the chair yesterday approved a proposal for the purchase.

The owners of the mansion, which is located over 2.4235 acres (146 kathas) of land on KM Das lane of Tikatuly, may be given a house in Gulshan, officials of the housing and public works ministry said.

The price was decided after taking into account the land price of the area which is Tk 2.5-3 crore per katha. The lowest ceiling makes the land a Tk 365 crore property. The archeological value of the house was fixed at Tk 100 crore, according to the proposal. 

This means the house is being bought at a much lower price than its value, said the proposal.

Heirs of the mansion's owner, late Kazi Abdur Raquib, sought a house on one bigha land in Gulshan in exchange of the Rose Garden.

The government is selling an abandoned property, a house built on one bigha land in Gulshan for Tk 90 crore. Some individuals filed a case about the Gulshan property but it has been settled and is now ready for handing over to the owners of Rose Garden, the official said.

The heirs are Raquib's wife Laila Raquib, two sons Kazi Ahmed Rashed and Kazi Ahmed Sajed and daughter Raman Tabammum.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina directed the finance division to allocate Tk 340 crore in favour of the housing ministry for the purchase of the Rose Garden. The allocation has been made.

According to the housing ministry proposal, the Rose Garden is a part of the political history and cultural heritage of Bangladesh.

Considering the aesthetic beauty of the mansion and its architecture, it was declared a protected archeological site on December 21, 1989.

In 1949, a group of Bengali nationalists from East Pakistan broke away from the Muslim League which was then Pakistan's dominant political party. In a meeting held at Rashid Manzil (the erstwhile name of Rose Garden) they came to a decision to form the All-Pakistan Awami Muslim League, with a vision to defend rights of the masses in Pakistan against the formation led by the Muslim League.

Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani and Shamsul Huq were elected president and general secretary of the party respectively. Ataur Rahman Khan was elected vice president while Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and AK Rafiqul Hussain were elected the party's first joint secretaries. The party is now known as Awami League.

Around the early 1900's, Hrishikesh Das became one of the prominent zamindars in Dhaka and built Rose Garden. Living an extravagant lifestyle, he soon became bankrupt and sold it in 1936 to Khan Bahadur Kazi Abdur Rashid, a zamindar and businessman. Rashid later renamed the place Rashid Manzil.