Yahya Khan postpones assembly session

On March 1, 1971, Pakistan's President, General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, announced the postponement of the scheduled session of the newly elected National Assembly for an indefinite period.

The meeting, earlier planned in Dhaka for March 3, would have set the future course for Pakistan through the making of a constitution within a period of 120 days as earlier stipulated in the Legal Framework Order by the military regime.

The President's announcement swiftly led to a worsening of a crisis earlier precipitated by the refusal of former foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Pakistan People's Party to attend the session of  the assembly unless the Awami League, the majority party led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, agreed to modify its Six Point plan for regional autonomy. It may be recalled that in the run-up to the general elections in December 1970, the first in Pakistan's history since its emergence as an independent state in 1947, the Awami League had made it clear that the elections would be considered a referendum on the Six Points.

In the event, of the 169 seats earmarked for East Pakistan in the National Assembly, the Awami League romped home with 167, which again was an overall majority all across Pakistan. Of the 313 seats, including those reserved for women, the Awami League bagged 167, followed by the PPP with 88 seats. The rest were divided among various smaller parties.

Early in the New Year, on January 3, 1971, Bangabandhu and the elected members of the National and Provincial Assemblies from East Pakistan took an oath at a mammoth pubic rally in Dhaka to uphold the Six Points and ensure that the future constitution of Pakistan was based on the programme. 'Bury us alive if we fail to live up to your expectations', Mujib told the million-strong crowd at the Race Course.

 Toward the end of January, Bhutto led a team of leading PPP figures to Dhaka to meet Mujib and other Awami League leaders. His proposal that the AL and PPP form a grand coalition on the pattern of the CDU-SDP alliance in West Germany was rejected by the leaders of the majority party. The talks came to nothing.

Following the elections, General Yahya Khan visited Dhaka and held talks with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other leading figures of the Awami League. Prior to his return to Rawalpindi, the President told newsmen at Dhaka airport (the now abandoned one at Tejgaon) that Mujib, as Pakistan's future Prime Minister, would be inheriting various problems which of course he would be expected to tackle. Yahya Khan's next meeting was with minority leader Bhutto at the latter's estate in Larkana, Sind, in early February 1971.

Within days of the Yahya-Bhutto meeting, the PPP chairman announced on February 15 that his party would not go to the National Assembly session in Dhaka unless the Awami League was ready to soften its stance on the Six Points. Bhutto also served warning that any member of the NA traveling to East Pakistan would be doing so at his own risk. For its part, the AL rejected Bhutto's demand out of hand and made it clear that it was preparing for the session in Dhaka.

Once General Yahya Khan had decided to defer the National Assembly session indefinitely, protests erupted all across Dhaka and the rest of the province. The Awami League called a general strike throughout East Pakistan for March 3. Meanwhile, in Dhaka, Bengali crowds were fired on at Farmgate.

The martial law authorities imposed a curfew on the city. In the evening, Vice Admiral S.M. Ahsan, Governor of East Pakistan, quit office as a protest against Yahya's decision. He was succeeded by Lt. Gen. Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, who had already been functioning as Martial Law Administrator Zone B, meaning East Pakistan (Yaqub would, in post-1971 Pakistan, serve as Pakistan's foreign minister under General Ziaul Haq and Benazir Bhutto).