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Former prime minister Khaleda Zia led the procession of several thousand opposition supporters in cars towards Sylhet city, some 300km north-east of capital Dhaka.
Zia, also the chief of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), on September 27 announced the march programme to protest against the scrapping of a constitutional provision which imposed a non-party caretaker system that has overseen three national elections.
The Awami League-led coalition government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina repealed the non-party system, introduced in 1996, in line with a court verdict, saying her government would strengthen the election commission to enable the holding of credible general elections.
But the opposition said it feared that the next election would be rigged if the polls were held under a political
administration.
“We will not take part in elections under any party government. Restoration of the caretaker administration is a must for holding a free and fair election,” Zia told a rally late last month in Dhaka.
The opposition plans marches to Rajshahi in the north-west and to the south-eastern city of Chittagong this month.
“This government has failed to deliver at every field and it has no right to cling to power anymore,” Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the party’s acting general secretary, told DPA.
He said the party chief and leaders of the member parties of the opposition alliance - Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh Jatiya Party - would hold at least six roadside rallies during the march to mobilise popular support.
On July 3, the BNP and its allies enforced a 48-hour general strike across Bangladesh when the government first removed the non-party caretaker provision from the constitution.